black-hawk-down

BLACK HAWK
DOWN

Mark Bowden

BLACK HAWK DOWN A CORGI BOOK : 0 552 14750 8
Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of
Transworld Publishers
PRINTING HISTORY

Bantam Press edition published 1999 Corgi edition published 2000

5 7 9 10 8 6 4 Copyright © Mark Bowden 1999

The right of Mark Bowden to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted in accordance with

sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and

Patents Act 1988.

Portions of this book were originally published as a series in The
Philadelphia Inquirer.

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out
or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in 10/12pt Palatine by Falcon Oast Graphic Art.

Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers,

61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA,
a division of The Random House Group Ltd,
in Australia by Random House Australia (Pty) Ltd,

20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, NSW 2061, Australia,
in New Zealand by Random House New Zealand Ltd,

18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand

and in South Africa by Random House (Pty) Ltd, Endulini, 5a Jubilee

Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading,
Berkshire.

For my mother, Rita Lois Bowden,
and in memory of my father,
Richard H. Bowden

MOGADISHU

^^8LACK S

CONTENTS

THE ASSAULT

11

BLACK HAWK DOWN

87

OVERRUN

161

THE ALAMO

237

N.S.D.Q.

307

EPILOGUE

389

SOURCES

409

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

411

PHOTOGRAPHS

413

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the
judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of
stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited
for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the ultimate
practitioner.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

THE ASSAULT

1

At liftoff, Matt Eversmann said a Hail Mary. He was
curled into a seat between two helicopter crew chiefs, the
knees of his long legs up to his shoulders. Before him,
jammed on both sides of the Black Hawk helicopter, was
his 'chalk,' twelve young men in flak vests over tan desert
camouflage fatigues.

He knew their faces so well they were like brothers.
The older guys on this crew, like Eversmann, a staff
sergeant with five years in at age twenty-six, had lived and
trained together for years. Some had come up together
through basic training, jump school, and Ranger school.
They had traveled the world, to Korea, Thailand, Central
America... they knew each other better than most brothers
did. They'd been drunk together, gotten into fights, slept on
forest floors, jumped out of airplanes, climbed mountains,
shot down foaming rivers with their hearts in their throats,
baked and frozen and starved together, passed countless
bored hours, teased one another endlessly about girlfriends
or lack of same, driven out in the middle of the night from
Fort Benning to retrieve each other from some diner or
strip club out on Victory Drive after getting drunk and
falling asleep or pissing off some barkeep. Through all
those things, they had been training for a moment like this.
It was the first time the lanky sergeant had been put in
charge, and he was nervous about it.

Pray for us sinners , now, and at the hour of our death,
amen.

It was midaftemoon, October 3, 1993. Eversmann’s
Chalk Four was part of a force of U.S. Army Rangers and
Delta Force operators who were about to drop in uninvited
on a gathering of Habr Gidr clan leaders in the heart of
Mogadishu, Somalia. This ragged clan, led by warlord
Mohamed Farrah Aidid, had picked a fight with the United
States of America, and it was, without a doubt, going
down. Today's targets were two of Aidid's lieutenants.
They would be arrested and imprisoned with a growing

number of the belligerent clan's bosses on an island off the
southern Somali coast city of Kismayo. Chalk Four's piece
of this snatch-and-grab was simple. Each of the four
Ranger chalks had a corner of the block around the target
house. Eversmann's would rope down to the northwest
corner and set up a blocking position. With Rangers on all
four corners, no one would enter the zone where Delta was
working, and no one would leave.

They had done this dozens of times without difficulty,
in practice and on the task force's six previous missions.
The pattern was clear in Eversmann's mind. He knew
which way to move when he hit the ground, where his
soldiers would be. Those out of the left side of the bird
would assemble on the left side of the street. Those out of
the right side would assemble right. Then they would peel
off in both directions, with the medics and the youngest
guys in the middle. Private First Class Todd Blackburn was
the baby on Eversmann's bird, a kid fresh out of Florida
high school who had not yet even been to Ranger school.
He’d need watching. Sergeant Scott Galentine was older
but also inexperienced here in Mog. He was a replacement,
just in from Benning. The burden of responsibility for these
young Rangers weighed heavily on Eversmann. This time
out they were his.

As chalk leader, he was handed headphones when he
took his front seat. They were bulky and had a mouthpiece
and were connected by a long black cord to a plug on the
ceiling. He took his helmet off and settled the phones over
his ears.

One of the crew chiefs tapped his shoulder.

'Matt, be sure you remember to take those off before
you leave,' he said, pointing to the cord.

Then they had stewed on the hot tarmac for what
seemed an hour, breathing the pungent diesel fumes and
oozing sweat under their body armor and gear, fingering
their weapons anxiously, every man figuring this mission
would probably be scratched before they got off the
ground. That's how it usually went. There were twenty
false alarms for every real mission. Back when they'd

arrived in Mog five weeks earlier, they were so flush with
excitement that cheers went up from Black Hawk to Black
Hawk every time they boarded the birds. Now spin -ups like
this were routine and usually amounted to nothing.

Waiting for the code word for launch, which today was
'Irene,' they were a formidable sum of men and machines.
There were four of the amazing AH-6 Little Birds, two-seat
bubble -front attack helicopters that could fly just about
anywhere. The Little Birds were loaded with rockets this
time, a first. Two would make the initial sweep over the
target and two more would help with rear security. There
were four MH-6 Little Birds with benches mounted on both
sides for delivering the spearhead of the assault force.
Delta's C Squadron, one of three operational elements in
the army's top secret commando unit. Following this strike
force were eight of the elongated troop-carrying Black
Hawks: two carrying Delta assaulters and their ground
command, four for delivering the Rangers (Company B,
3rd Battalion of the army's 75th Infantry, the Ranger
Regiment out of Fort Benning, Georgia), one carrying a
crack CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) team, and one to
fly the two mission commanders - Lieutenant Colonel Tom
Matthews, who was coordinating the pilots of the 160th
SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment out of Fort
Campbell, Kentucky); and Delta Lieutenant Colonel Gary
Harrell, who had responsibility for the men on the ground.
The ground convoy, which was lined up and idling out by
the front gate, consisted of nine wide-body Humvees and
three five-ton trucks. The trucks would be used to haul the
prisoners and assault forces out. The Humvees were filled
with Rangers, Delta operators, and four members of SEAL
(Sea, Air, Land) Team Six, part of the navy's special forces
branch. Counting the three surveillance birds and the spy
plane high overhead, there were nineteen aircraft, twelve
vehicles, and about 160 men. It was an eager armada on a
taut rope.

There were signs this one would go. The commander of
Task Force Ranger, Major General William F. Garrison,
had come out to see them off. He had never done that

before. A tall, slender, gray-haired man in desert fatigues
with half an unlit cigar jutting from the corner of his
mouth. Garrison had walked from chopper to chopper and
then stooped down by each Humvee.

'Be careful,' he said in his Texas drawl.

Then he'd move on to the next man.

'Good luck.'

Then the next.

'Be careful.'

The swell of all those revving engines made the earth
tremble and their pulses race. It was stirring to be part of it,
the cocked fist of America's military might. Woe to
whatever stood in their way. Bristling with grenades and
ammo, gripping the steel of their automatic weapons, their
hearts pounding under their flak vests, they waited with a
heady mix of hope and dread. They ran through last-minute
mental checklists, saying prayers, triple -checking weapons,
rehearsing their precise tactical choreography, performing
little rituals... whatever it was that prepared them for battle.
They all knew this mission might get hairy. It was an
audacious daylight thrust into the 'Black Sea,' the very
heart of Habr Gidr territory in central Mogadishu and
warlord Aidid's stronghold. Their target was a three-story
house of whitewashed stone with a flat roof, a modern
modular home in one of the city's few remaining clusters of
intact large buildings, surrounded by blocks and blocks of
tin-roofed dwellings of muddy stone. Hundreds of
thousands of clan members lived in this labyrinth of
irregular dirt streets and cactus-lined paths. There were no
decent maps. Pure Indian country.

The men had watched the rockets being loaded on the
AH-6s. Garrison hadn't done that on any of their earlier
missions. It meant they were expecting trouble. The men
had girded themselves with extra ammo, stuffing
magazines and grenades into every available pocket and
pouch of their load-bearing harnesses, leaving behind
canteens, bayonets, night-vision goggles, and any other
gear they felt would be deadweight on a fast daylight raid.
The prospect of getting into a scrape didn't worry them.

Not at all. They welcomed it. They were predators, heavy
metal avengers, unstoppable, invincible. The feeling was,
after six weeks of diddling around they were finally going
in to kick some serious Somali ass.

It was 3.32 P.M. when the chalk leader inside the lead
Black Hawk, Super Six Four, heard over the intercom the
soft voice of the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant,
clearly pleased.

Durant announced, 'Fuckin' Irene. '

And the armada launched, lifting off from the shabby
airport by the sea into an embracing blue vista of sky and
Indian Ocean. They eased out across a littered strip of
white sand and moved low and fast over running breakers
that formed faint crests parallel to the shore. In close
formation they banked and flew down the coastline
southwest. From each bird the booted legs of the eager
soldiers dangled from the benches and open doors.

Unrolling toward a hazy desert horizon, Mogadishu in
midafternoon sun was so bright it was as if the aperture on
the world's lens was stuck one click wide. From a distance
the ancient port city had an auburn hue, with its streets of
ocher sand and its rooftops of Spanish tile and rusted tin.
The only tall structures still standing after years of civil war
were the ornate white towers of mosques - Islam being the
only thing all Somalia held sacred. There were many scrub
trees, the tallest just over the low rooftops, and between
them high stone walls with pale traces of yellow and pink
and gray, fading remnants of pre -civil war civility. Set
there along the coast, framed to the west by desert and the
east by gleaming teal ocean, it might have been some
sleepy Mediterranean resort.

As the helicopter force swept in over it, gliding back in
from the ocean and then banking right and sprinting
northeast along the city's western edge, Mogadishu spread
beneath them in its awful reality, a catastrophe, the world
capital of things-gonecompletely-to-hell. It was as if the
city had been ravaged by some fatal urban disease. The few
paved avenues were crumbling and littered with mountains
of trash, debris, and the rusted hulks of burned-out

vehicles. Those walls and buildings that had not been
reduced to heaps of gray rubble were pockmarked with
bullet scars. Telephone poles leaned at ominous angles like
voodoo totems topped by stiff sprays of dreadlocks - the
stubs of their severed wires (long since stripped for sale on
the thriving black market). Public spaces displayed the
hulking stone platforms that once held statuary from the
heroic old days of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, the
national memory stripped bare not out of revolutionary
fervor, but to sell the bronze and copper for scrap. The few
proud old government and university buildings that still
stood were inhabited now by refugees. Everything of value
had been looted, right down to metal window frames,
doorknobs, and hinges. At night, campfires glowed from
third- and fourth-story windows of the old Polytechnic
Institute. Every open space was clotted with the dense
makeshift villages of the disinherited, round stick huts
covered with layers of rags and shacks made of scavenged
scraps of wood and patches of rusted tin. From above they
looked like an advanced stage of some festering urban rot.

In his bird, Super Six Seven, Eversmann rehearsed the
plan in his mind. By the time they reached the street, the D-
boys would already be taking down the target house,
rounding up Somali prisoners and shooting anyone foolish
enough to fight back. Word was there were two big boys in
this house, men whom the task force had identified as 'Tier
One Personalities,' Aidid's top men. As the D-boys did their
work and the Rangers kept the curious at bay, the ground
convoy of trucks and Humvees would roll in through the
city, right up to the target house. The prisoners would be
herded into the trucks. The assault team and blocking force
would jump in behind them and they would all drive back
to finish out a nice Sunday afternoon on the beach. It would
take about an hour.

To make room for the Rangers in the Black Hawks, the
seats in back had been removed. The men who were not in
the doorways were squatting on ammo cans or seated on
flak-proof Kevlar panels laid out on the floor. They all
wore desert camouflage fatigues, with Kevlar vests and

helmets and about fifty pounds of equipment and ammo
strapped to their load-bearing harnesses, which fit on over
the vests. All had goggles and thick leather gloves. Those
layers of gear made even the slightest of them look bulky,
robotic, and intimidating. Stripped down to their dirt -brown
T-shirts and shorts, which is how they spent most of their
time in the hangar, most looked like the pimply teenagers
they were (average age nineteen). They were immensely
proud of their Ranger status. It spared them most of the
numbing noncombat-related routine that drove many an
army enlistee nuts. The Rangers trained for war full-time.
They were fitter, faster, and first - 'Rangers lead the way!'
was their motto. Each had volunteered at least three times
to get where they were, for the army, for airborne, and for
the Rangers.

They were the cream, the most highly motivated young
soldiers of their generation, selected to fit the army's ideal -
they were all male and, revealingly, nearly all white (there
were only two blacks among the 140-man company). Some
were professional soldiers, like Lieutenant Larry Perino, a
1990 West Point graduate. Some were overachievers in
search of a different challenge, like Specialist John
Waddell on Chalk Two, who had enlisted after finishing
high school in Natchez, Mississippi, with a 4.0 GPA. Some
were daredevils in search of a physical challenge. Others
were self-improvers, young men who had found themselves
adrift after high school, or in trouble with drugs, booze, the
law, or all three. They were harder-edged than most young
men of their generation who, on this Sunday in early
autumn, were weeks into their fall college semester. Most
of these Rangers had been kicked around some, had tasted
failure. But there were no goof-offs. Every man had
worked to be here, probably harder than he'd ever worked
in his life. Those with troubled pasts had taken harsh
measure of themselves. Beneath their best hard-ass act,
most were achingly earnest, patriotic, and idealistic. They
had literally taken the army up on its offer to 'Be All You
Can Be.'

They held themselves to a higher standard than normal

soldiers. With their buff bodies, distinct crew cuts - sides
and back of the head completely shaved -and their grunted
Hoo-ah greeting, they saw themselves as the army at its
gung ho best. Many, if they could make it, aspired to join
Special Forces, maybe even get picked to try out for Delta,
the hale, secret supersoldiers now leading this force in.
Only the very best of them would be invited to try out, and
only one of every ten invited would make it through
selection. In this ancient male hierarchy, the Rangers were
a few steps up the ladder, but the Dboys owned the
uppermost rung.

Rangers knew the surest path to that height was combat
experience. So far, Mog had been mostly a tease. War was
always about to happen. About to happen. Even the
missions, exciting as they'd been, had fallen short. The
Somalis - whom they called 'Skinnies' or 'Sammies' - had
taken a few wild shots at them, enough to get the Rangers'
blood up and unleash a hellish torrent of return fire, but
nothing that qualified as a genuine balls -out firefight.

Which is what they wanted. All of these guys. If there
were any hesitant thoughts, they were buttoned tight. A lot
of these men had started as afraid of war as anyone, but the
fear had been drummed out. Especially in Ranger training.
About a fourth of those who volunteered washed out,
enough so that those who emerged with their Ranger tab at
the end were riding the headiest wave of accomplishment
in their young lives. The weak had been weeded out. The
strong had stepped up. Then came weeks, months, years of
constant training. The Hoo-ahs couldn't wait to go to war.
They were an all-star football team that had endured
bruising, exhausting, dangerous practice sessions twelve
hours a day, seven days a week - for years - without ever
getting to play a game.

They yearned for battle. They passed around the dog-
eared paperback memoirs of soldiers from past conflicts,
many written by former Rangers, and savored the
affectionate, comradely tone of their stories, feeling bad for
the poor suckers who bought it or got crippled or maimed
but identifying with the righteous men who survived the

experience whole. They studied the old photos, which were
the same from every war, young men looking dirty and
tired, half dressed in army combat fatigues, dogtags
hanging around their skinny necks, posing with arms
draped over each other's shoulders in exotic lands. They
could see themselves in those snapshots, surrounded by
their buddies, fighting their war. It was THE test, the only
one that counted.

Sergeant Mike Goodale had tried to explain this to his
mother one time, on leave in Illinois. His mom was a nurse,
incredulous at his bravado.

'Why would anybody want to go to war?' she asked.

Goodale told her it would be like, as a nurse, after all
her training, never getting the chance to work in a hospital.
It would be like that.

'You want to find out if you can really do the job,' he
explained.

Like those guys in books. They'd been tested and
proven. It was another generation of Rangers' turn now.
Their turn.

It didn't matter that none of the men in these helicopters
knew enough to write a high school paper about Somalia.
They took the army's line without hesitation. Warlords had
so ravaged the nation battling among themselves that their
people were starving to death. When the world sent food,
the evil warlords hoarded it and killed those who tried to
stop them. So the civilized world had decided to lower the
hammer, invite the baddest boys on the planet over to clean
things up. 'Nuff said. Little the Rangers had seen since
arriving at the end of August had altered that perception.
Mogadishu was like the postapocalyptic world of Mel
Gibson’s Mad Max movies, a world ruled by roving gangs
of armed thugs. They were here to rout the worst of the
warlords and restore sanity and civilization.

Eversmann had always just enjoyed being a Ranger. He
wasn't sure how he felt about being in charge, even if it was
just temporary. He'd won the distinction by default. His
platoon sergeant had been summoned home by an illness in
his family, and then the guy who replaced him had keeled

over with an epileptic seizure. He, too, had been sent home.
Eversmann was the senior man in line. He accepted the
task hesitantly. That morning at Mass in the mess he'd
prayed about it.

Airborne now at last, Eversmann swelled with energy
and pride as he looked out over the full armada. It was a
state-of-the-art military force. Already circling high above
the target was the slickest intelligence support America had
to offer, including satellites, a high-flying P3 Orion spy
plane, and three OH-58 observation helicopters, which
looked like the bubble -front Little Bird choppers with a
five -foot bulbous polyp growing out of the top. The
observation birds were equipped with video cameras and
radio equipment that would relay the action live to General
Garrison and the other senior officers in the Joint
Operations Center (JOC) back at the beach. Moviemakers
and popular authors might strain to imagine the peak
capabilities of the U.S. military, but here was the real thing
about to strike. It was a well-oiled, fully equipped, late-
twentieth-century fighting machine. America's best were
going to war, and Sergeant Matt Eversmann was among
them.

2

It was only a three-minute flight to the target. With the
earphones on, Eversmann could listen to most of the
frequencies in use. There was the command net, which
linked the commanders on the ground to Matthews and
Harrell circling overhead in the Command and Control (or
'C2') Black Hawk, and with Garrison and the other brass
back in the JOC. The pilots had their own link to air
commander Matthews, and Delta and the Rangers each had
their own internal radio links. For the duration of the
mission all other broadcast frequencies in the city were
being jammed. Inside the steady scratch of static,
Eversmann heard a confusing overlap of calm voices, all
the different elements preparing for the assault.

By the time the Black Hawks had moved down low
over the city for their final approach from the north, the
advance Little Birds were already closing in on the target.
There was still time to abort the mission.

Burning tires on the street near the target triggered
momentary alarm. Somalis often set fires to signal trouble
and summon militia. Could they be flying into an ambush?

- Those tires, have they been burning for a pretty good
period of time or did they just light them, over ? asked a
Little Bird pilot.

- Those tires were burning this morning when we were
up, answered a pilot on one of the observation birds.

Two minutes,' the Super Six Seven pilot alerted
Eversmann. The Little Birds moved into position for their
'bump,' a sudden climb and then a dive that would sweep
them over the target house with their rockets and guns
pointing down. One by one, the various units would repeat
’Lucy,' the code word for the assault to begin: Romeo Six
Four, Colonel Harrell; Kilo Six Four, Captain Scott Miller,
the Delta assault -force commander; Barber Five One,
veteran pilot Chief Warrant Officer Randy Jones in the lead
AH-6 gun-ship; Juliet Six Four, Captain Mike Steele, the
Ranger commander aboard Durant's bird; and Uniform Six
Four, Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight, who was
commanding the ground convoy poised to take them all
out. The convoy had rolled up to a spot several blocks
away.

- This is Romeo Six Four to all elements. Lucy. Lucy.
Lucy.

- This is Kilo Six Four, roger Lucy.

- This is Barber Five One, roger Lucy.

- Juliet Six Four, roger Lucy.

- This is Uniform Six Four, roger Lucy.

- All elements, Lucy.

It was 3.43 P.M. On the screen in the JOC, commanders
saw a crowded Mogadishu neighborhood, in much better
shape than most. The Olympic Hotel was the most obvious
landmark, a five-story white building that looked like
stacked rectangular blocks with square balconies at each

level. There was another similar large building on the same
side of the street one block south. Both cast long shadows
over Hawlwadig Road, the wide paved street that ran
before them. At the intersections where dirt alleys crossed
Hawlwadig, sandy soil drifted across the pavement. The
soil was a striking rust-orange in the late afternoon light.
There were trees in the courtyards and between some of the
smaller houses. The target building was across Hawlwadig
from the hotel one block north. It was built in the same
stacked-blocks style, Lshaped, with three stories to the
rear and a flat roof over the two stories in front. It wrapped
around a small southern courtyard toward the rear and was
enclosed, as was the whole long block, by a high stone
wall. Moving in front, on Hawlwadig, were cars and people
and donkey carts. It was a normal Sunday afternoon. The
target area was just blocks away from the center of the
Bakara Market, the busiest in the city. Conditioned to the
helicopters now, people moving below did not even look
up as the first two Little Birds came sweeping into the
frame from the top, from the north, and then banked
sharply east and moved off the screen.

Neither chopper fired a shot.

’One minute,' the Super Six Seven pilot informed
Eversmann.

The Delta operators would go in first to storm the
building. The Rangers would come in behind them, roping
down from the Black Hawks to form a perimeter around
the target block.

Delta rode in on benches outside the bubble frames of
the four MH-6 Little Birds, each chopper carrying a four-
man team. They wore big black flak vests and plastic
hockey helmets over a radio earplug and a wraparound
microphone that kept them in constant voice contact with
each other. They wore no insignias on their uniforms.
Hanging out over the street on their low, fast approach,
they scanned the people below, their upturned startled
faces, their hands, their demeanor, trying to read what
would happen when they hit the street. As the Little Birds
came in, the crowd spooked. People and cars began to

scatter. Wind from the powerful rotors knocked some
people down and tore the colorful robes off some of the
women. A few of the Rangers, still high overhead, spotted
people below gesturing up at them eagerly, as if inviting
them to come down to the streets and fight.

The first two Little Birds landed immediately south of
the target building on the narrow rutted alley, blowing up
thick clouds of dust. The brownout was so severe that the
pilots and men on the side benches could see nothing
looking down. One of the choppers found its original
landing spot taken by the first chopper in, so it banked
right, performed a quick circle to the west, and came down
directly in front of the target.

Sergeant First Class Norm Flooten, a team leader on the
fourth Little Bird, felt the rotor blade on his chopper
actually nick the side of the target building as it came to a
hover. Figuring the bird had gone as low as it could,
Flooten and his team kicked their fast rope and jumped for
it, planning to slide down the rest of the way. It was the
world's shortest fast rope. They were only a foot off the
ground.

They moved directly toward the house. Taking down a
house like this was Delta's specialty. Speed was critical.
When a crowded house was filled suddenly with
explosions, smoke, and flashes of light, those inside were
momentarily frightened and disoriented. Experience
showed that most would drop down and move to the
corners. So long as Delta caught them in this startled state,
most would follow stern simple commands without
question. The Rangers had watched the Dboys at work
now on several missions, and the operators had moved in
with such speed and authority it was hard to imagine
anyone having the presence of mind to resist. But just a few
seconds made a difference. The more time those inside had
to sort out what was happening, the harder they would be to
subdue.

The lead assault team that landed on the southern alley,
led by Sergeant First Class Matt Rierson, tossed harmless
flashbang grenades into the courtyard and pushed open a

metal gate leading inside. They raced up some back steps
and directly into the house, shouting for those inside to get
down. Hooten's four-man team, along with one led by
Sergeant First Class Paul Howe, charged toward the west
side of the building, facing Hawlwadig Road. Hooten's
team entered a shop with colorful cartoons of typewriters,
pens, pencils, and other office items painted on the front
walls, the Olympic Stationery Store. Inside were six or
seven Somalis who promptly dropped to the floor and
stretched their arms in front of them in response to the
barked commands. Hooten could hear sporadic gunfire
outside already, much more than he'd heard on any of the
previous missions. Howe's team entered through the next
doorway down. The thickly muscled sergeant kicked the
legs out from under a stunned Somali man just outside the
doorway, dropping him. Howe swept the room with his
CAR-15, a black futuristic -looking weapon with a pump-
action shotgun attached to the bayonet lug in front. It was
important to assert immediate control. All he found was a
warehouse filled with sacks and odds and ends.

Both teams knew they were looking for a residence, so
they quickly moved back out to the street. They ran south
along Hawlwadig and turned left, heading for the courtyard
their teammates had already broken into. They rounded the
corner in a worsening dust storm. The Black Hawks were
moving in.

The first, carrying the Delta ground commander and a
support element, flared and hovered about a block north of
the target on Hawlwadig as Captain Miller and the other
commandos on board roped down. Along with another
Black Hawk full of assaulters, they would be the second
wave to storm the house. Behind them came the Rangers
on four Black Hawks, roping down to positions at the four
corners of the block to form the assault's outer perimeter.

As ropes dropped from Black Hawk Super Six Six,
hovering over the southwest corner. Chalk Three began
sliding down to the street in twos, one man from each side
of the bird. A crew chief shouted, 'No fear!' to each man
who exited his side of the aircraft. As Sergeant Keni

Thomas reached for the rope, he thought, Fuck you , pal,
you're not the one going in.

Hovering high over Hawlwadig two blocks north, the
Super Six Seven pilot told Eversmann, 'Prepare to throw the
ropes.'

Chalk Four was at about seventy feet, higher than they'd
ever fast-roped, yet dust from the street was in the open
doors. Waiting for the other five Black Hawks to get in
position, it seemed to Eversmann that they had held their
hover for a dangerously long time. Even over the sound of
the rotor and engines the men could hear the pop of
gunfire. A Black Hawk hanging in the sky like that made a
big target. The three-inch-thick nylon ropes were coiled
before the doors on both sides. Specialist Dave Dierner was
waiting in the right-side door with Sergeant Casey Joyce.
At the head of the line at the left door was the kid,
Blackburn. When they kicked out the ropes, at the pilot's
command, one dropped down on a car. This delayed things
further. The Black Hawk jerked forward trying to drag the
rope free.

'We're a little short of our desired position,' the pilot
informed Eversmann. They were going in about a block
north of their comer.

'No problem,' he said.

The sergeant felt it would be safer on the ground.

'We're about one hundred meters short,' the pilot
warned.

Eversmann gave him a thumbs up.

Men started leaping. The door gunners shouted, 'Go!
Go! Go!'

Eversmann would be the last man out. He removed the
headphones and was momentarily deafened by the noise of
the helicopter and the explosions and gunfire below.
Ordinarily Eversmann wore earplugs on missions, but he'd
left them out today because he knew he'd have the
headphones. He draped them over his canteen and reached
for his goggles. Battling the excitement and confusion, all
his movements became deliberate. He would fasten the
goggles over his eyes and then, mindful of the crew chief's

instruction, would set the headphones on his seat before he
left. But the damn strap on his goggles snapped.
Eversmann fiddled with it for a moment as the last of his
men leapt out, trying to find a way to fix them, saw that it
was his turn to hit the rope, chucked the goggles, and
jumped, ripping the headset cord from the ceiling and
taking the earphones right out of the helicopter with him.

He hadn't realized how high up they were. The slide
down was far longer than any they'd done in training.
Friction burned through his heavy leather gloves, leaving
the palms of his hands raw, and he felt terribly vulnerable,
fully extended on the rope for what felt like twice the
normal time. As he neared the ground, through the swirling
dust below his feet, he saw one of his men stretched out on
his back at the bottom of the rope. Eversmann's heart sank.
Somebody's been shot already! He gripped the rope hard to
keep himself from landing right on top of the guy. It was
the kid. Eversmann's feet touched the street next to him,
and the crew chiefs above released the ropes. They dropped
twisting and slapped down across the pavement. As the
Black Hawk moved away the noise and dust began to ease,
and the city's musky odor bore in like the smell of
something overripe.

Blackburn was bleeding from the nose and ears. Private
First Class Mark Good, the medic, was already at work on
him. The kid had one eye shut and the other open. Blood
was coming from his mouth and he was making a gurgling
sound. He was unconscious. Good had been through
emergency medical training, but this was beyond him. It
was the most severe injury the task force had seen in
Somalia.

Blackburn hadn't been shot, he'd fallen. He'd somehow
missed the rope. Seventy feet straight down to the street.
He had just been reassigned as assistant to the chalk's 60
gunner, and he'd been carrying a lot of ammo, so he was
heavier than he'd ever been on a fast rope. That, the
excitement, the extreme height of the rope-in... for
whatever reason, he hadn't held on. He looked all busted up
inside. Eversmann stepped away. He took a quick count of

his chalk.

Hawlwadig was about fifteen yards wide, littered with
debris, as was all of Mogadishu. The dust cloud thinned,
and he could see his men had peeled off as planned against
the mud-stained stone walls on either side of the street.
That left Eversmann in the middle of the road with
Blackburn and Good. It was hot, and fine sand was caked
in his eyes, nose, and ears. They were taking fire, but it
wasn't accurate. Oddly, it hadn't even registered with the
sergeant at first. You would think bullets flying past would
command your attention, but he'd been too preoccupied to
notice. Now he did. Passing bullets made a loud snap, like
cracking a stick of dry hickory. Eversmann had never been
shot at before. So this is what it's like. As big a target as he
made, he figured he'd better find some cover. He and Good
grabbed Blackburn under the arms and head, trying to keep
his neck straight, and dragged him to the west side of the
intersection. There they squatted behind two parked cars.

Eversmann shouted up the street to his radio operator,
Private First Class Jason Moore, and asked him to raise
Captain Mike Steele on the company net. Steele and two
lieutenants, Larry Perino and Jim Lechner, had roped down
with the rest of Chalk One at the southeast corner of the
target block. Chalk Four was at the northwest corner.
Minutes passed. Moore shouted back down the street to say
he couldn't get Steele.

'What do you mean you can't get him?' Moore just
shrugged. The tobacco-chewing roughneck from Princeton,
New Jersey, was wearing a headset under his helmet that
allowed him to talk without tying up his hands. Before
leaving he'd taped the on/off switch for his microphone to
his rifle - a nifty touch, he thought. But as he'd roped in,
he'd inadvertently clasped the connecting wire against the
rope. Friction had burned right through it. Moore hadn't
noticed it yet, however, and couldn't figure out why his
calls weren't being heard.

Eversmann tried his walkie-talkie. Again Steele didn't
answer, but after several tries Lieutenant Perino came on
the line. The sergeant knew this was their first time in

combat, and his first time in charge, so he made a particular
effort to speak slowly and clearly. He explained that
Blackburn had fallen and was hurt, bad. He needed to come
out. Eversmann tried to convey urgency without alarm.

- Say again, said Perino.

The sergeant's voice was fading in and out on his radio.
Eversmann repeated himself. There was a delay. Then
Perino's voice came back.

- Say all again, over.

Eversmann was shouting now. He repeated, ’Man down,
WE NEED TO EXTRACT HIM ASAP!'

- Calm down, Perino said.

That really burned Eversmann. This is one hell of a tune
to start sharpshooting me.

The radio call brought two Delta medics running up
Hawlwadig, Sergeants First Class Kurt Schmid and Bart
Bullock. The more experienced men quickly began
assisting Good. Schmid inserted a tube down Blackburn's
throat to help him breathe. Bullock put a needle in the kid's
arm and hooked up an IV.

Fire was growing heavier. To the officers watching on
screens in the command center, it was like they had poked
a stick into a hornets' nest. It was an amazing and
unnerving thing, to view a battle in real time. Cameras
from high over the fight captured crowds of Somalis
throughout the area erecting barricades and lighting tires to
summon help. Thousands of people were pouring into the
streets, many with weapons.

They were racing from all directions toward the Bakara
Market, where the mass of helicopters overhead clearly
marked the fight throughout the city. Moving in from more
distant parts were vehicles overflowing with armed men.
The largest number appeared to be coming from the north,
directly toward Eversmann's position and that of Chalk
Two, which had roped in at the northeast corner.

Eversmann's men had fanned out and were shooting in
every direction except back toward the target building.
Across the street from where the medics were working on
Blackburn, Sergeant Casey Joyce had his M-16 trained on

the growing crowd to the north. Somalis approached in
groups of a dozen or more from around corners several
blocks up, and others, closer, darted in and out of alleys
taking shots at them. They were wary of the Americans'
guns, but edging in. The Rangers were bound by strict rules
of engagement. They were to shoot only at someone who
pointed a weapon at them, but already this was unrealistic.
It was clear they were being shot at, and down the street
they could see Somalis with guns. But those with guns
were intermingled with the unarmed, including women and
children. The Somalis were strange that way. Most
noncombatants who heard gunshots and explosions would
flee. Whenever there was a disturbance in Mogadishu,
people would throng to the spot. Men, women, children -
even the aged and infirm. It was like some national
imperative to bear witness. Rangers peering down their
sights silently begged the gawkers to get the hell out of the
way.

Things were not playing out according to the neat script
in Eversmann's head. His chalk was still a block north of
their position. He’d figured they could just hoof it down
once they got on the ground, but Blackburn falling and the
unexpected volume of gunfire had ruled that out. Time
played tricks. It would be hard to explain to someone who
wasn't there. Events outside him seemed to be happening at
a frantic pace, but his own perceptions had slowed; seconds
were like minutes. He had no idea how much time had
gone by. Two minutes? Five? Ten? It was hard to believe
things could have gone so much to hell in such a short
time.

He knew the Dboys worked fast. He kept checking
behind him to see if the ground convoy had moved up. It
was too early for that, but he looked anyway, wishing,
because that would be a sign that things were wrapping up.
He must have looked a dozen times before he saw the first
Humvee round the corner about three blocks down. What a
relief! Maybe the D-boys have finished and we can roll out
of here.

Schmid, the Delta medic, had examined Blackburn

more closely, and was alarmed. The kid had a severe head
injury at a minimum, and there was a big lump on the back
of his neck. It might be a break. He looked up at
Eversmann.

’He's litter urgent. Sergeant. We need to extract him
right now or he's gonna die.'

Eversmann called Perino again.

'Listen, we really need to move this guy or he's gonna
die. Can't you send somebody up the street?'

No, the Humvees could not nrove up. Eversmann I
relayed this news to the Delta medic.

'Listen, Sergeant, we've got to get him out,' said
Schmid.

So Eversmann summoned two of the sergeants in his
chalk, Casey Joyce and Jeff McLaughlin, who came
running. He addressed the more senior of the two,
McLaughlin, shouting over the escalating noise of the fight.

'You need to move Blackburn down to those Humvees,
toward the target.'

They unfolded a compact litter and placed Blackburn
on it. Five men took off with him, Joyce and McLaughlin
in front, Bullock and Schmid in back, with Good running
alongside holding up the IV bag connected to the kid’s arm.
They ran stooped. McLaughlin didn't think Blackburn was
going to make it. On the litter he was deadweight, still
bleeding from the nose and mouth. They were all yelling at
him, 'Hang on! Hang on!' but, by the look of him, he had
already let go.

They had to keep setting down the litter to return fire.
They would run a few steps, set Blackburn down, shoot,
then pick him up and carry him a few more steps, then put
him down again.

'We've got to get those Humvees to come to us,' said
Schmid. 'We keep picking him up and putting him down
like this and we're going to kill him.’

Joyce volunteered to fetch a Humvee. He took off
running on his own.

3

On the screens and from the speakers in the JOC,
everything appeared to be going smoothly. The command
center was a whitewashed two -story structure adjacent to
the hangar at Task Force Ranger's airport base. A mortar
round had fallen on it at some pointy and the roof was
caved in on one side. It bristled with so many antennae and
wires that the men called it the Porcupine. On the first
floor, off a long corridor, there were three rooms where
senior officers sat wearing headphones and watching TV
screens. General Garrison sat in the back of the operations
room, chewing his cigar and taking it all in. Color images
of the fight were coming from cameras in the Orion spy
plane and the observation helicopters, and there were five
or six radio frequencies buzzing. Garrison and his staff
probably had more instant information about this unfolding
battle than any commanders in history, but there wasn't
much they could do but watch and listen. So long as things
stayed on course, any decisions would be made by the men
in the fight. The general's job was to stay on top of the
situation and try to think one or two steps ahead. In the
event things went wrong he could call across the city to the
UN compound, where troops from the 10th Mountain
Division waited, three regular army companies in varying
degrees of readiness. So far there was no need. Other than
one injured Ranger, the mission was clean. At about the
same time they learned of Blackburn's fall, the Dboys
inside the target building radioed that they'd found the men
they were looking for. This was going to be a success.

It had been risky, going into Aidid's Black Sea
neighborhood in daylight. The nearby Bakara Market was
the center of the Habr Gidr world. Dropping in next door
was a thumb in the warlord's eye. The UN forces stationed
in Mog, most of them Pakistanis since the U.S. Marines
had pulled out in May, wouldn't go near that part of town.
It was the one place in the city where Aidid's forces could
mount a serious fight on short notice, and Garrison knew

the dangers of slugging it out there. Washington’s
commitment to Somalia wouldn't withstand many
American losses. He had warned in a memo just weeks
before:

’If we go into the vicinity of the Bakara Market, there's
no question we'll win the gunfight, but we might lose the
war.'

The timing was also risky. Garrison's task force
preferred to work at night. Their helicopters were flown by
the crack pilots of the 160th SOAR, who had dubbed
themselves the Night Stalkers. They were expert at flying
totally black. With night-vision devices, they could move
around on a moonless night like it was midday. The unit's
pilots had been involved in almost every U.S. ground
combat operation since Vietnam. When they weren’t
fighting they were practicing, and their skills were simply
amazing. These pilots were fearless, and could fly
helicopters in and out of spaces where it would be hard to
insert them with a crane. Darkness made the speed and
precision of the D-boys and Rangers that much more
deadly. Night afforded still another advantage. Many
Somali men, particularly the young men who cruised
around Mog on 'technicals,' vehicles with .50-caliber
machine guns bolted in back, were addicted to khat, a mild
amphetamine that looks like watercress. Midafternoon was
the height of the daily cycle. Most started chewing at about
noon, and by late afternoon were wired, jumpy, and raring
to go. Late at night it was just the opposite. The khat
chewers had crashed. So today's mission called for going to
the worst place in Mog at the worst possible time.

Still, the chance of bagging two of Aidid's top men at
the same time was too good to pass up. They had done
three previous missions in daylight without a hitch. Risk
was part of the job. They were daring men; that's why they
were here.

The Somalis had seen six raids now, so they more or
less knew what to expect. The task force had done what it
could to keep them guessing. Three times daily, mission or
no mission, Garrison would scramble the whole force onto

helicopters and send them up over the city. The Rangers
loved it at first. You piled into the back end of a Black
Hawk and held on for dear life. The hotshot Nightstalkers
would swoop down low and fast and bank so hard it would
stack your insides into one half of your body. They'd rocket
down streets below the roofline, with walls and people on
both sides flashing past in a blur, then climb hundreds of
feet and scream back down again. Corporal Jamie Smith
wrote to his folks back in Long Valley, New Jersey, that
the profile flights were 'like a ride on a roller coaster at Six
Flags!' But with so many flights, it got old.

Garrison had also been careful to vary their tactics.
They usually came in on helicopters and left by vehicles,
but sometimes they came in on vehicles and left by
helicopters. Sometimes they came and left on choppers, or
on vehicles. So the template changed. Above all, the troops
were good. They were experienced and well trained.

They had come close to grabbing Aidid several times,
but that wasn't their only goal. Their six previous missions
had struck fear into the Habr Gidr ranks, and more recently
they'd begun to pick off the warlord's top people. Garrison
felt they had performed superbly so far, despite press
accounts that portrayed them as bumblers. When they'd
inadvertently arrested a group of UN employees on their
first mission - 'the employees' had been nabbed in an off-
limits area with piles of black market contraband - the
newspapers had dubbed them Keystone Kops. Garrison had
the stories copied and posted in the hangar. That sort of
thing just fired the guys up more, but to the public, and to
Washington officials keenly concerned about how things
played on CNN, the task force was so far a bust. They had
been handed what seemed like a simple assignment,
capture the tinhorn Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid
or, failing that, take down his organization, and for six
weeks now they'd had precious little visible success.
Patience was wearing thin, and pressure for progress was
mounting.

Just that morning Garrison had been stewing about it in
his office. It was like trying to hit a curveball blindfolded.

Here he had a force of men he could drop on a building -
any building - in Mogadishu with just a few minutes'
notice. These weren't just any men, they were faster,
stronger, smarter, and more experienced than any soldiers
in the world.

Point out a target building and the D-boys could take it
down so fast that the bad guys inside would be hog-tied
before the sound of the flashbang grenades and door
charges had stopped ringing in their ears. They could herd
the whole mess of them out by truck or helicopter before
the neighborhood militia even had a chance to pull on its
pants. Garrison's force could do all this and even videotape
the whole operation in color for training purposes (and to
show off a little back at the Pentagon), but they couldn't do
any of these things unless their spies on the ground pointed
them at the right goddamn house.

For three nights running they had geared up to launch at
a house where Aidid was either present or about to be (so
the general's spies told him). Every time they had failed to
nail it down.

Garrison knew from day one that intelligence was going
to be a problem. The original plan had called for a daring,
well-placed lead Somali spy, the head of the CIA's local
operation, to present Aidid an elegant hand-carved cane
soon after Task Force Ranger arrived. Embedded in the
head of the cane was a homing beacon. It seemed like a
sure thing until, on Garrison's first day in-country,
Lieutenant Colonel Dave McKnight, his chief of staff,
informed him that their lead informant had shot himself in
the head playing Russian roulette. It was the kind of idiotic
macho thing guys did when they'd lived too long on the
edge.

'He’s not dead,’ McKnight told the general, 'but we're
fucked.'

When you worked with the locals there were going to
be setbacks. Few people knew this better than Garrison,
who was the picture of American military machismo with
his gray crew cut, desert camouflage fatigues, and combat
boots, a 9 mm pistol strapped to a shoulder holster and that

unlit half cigar jammed perpetually in the side of his
mouth. Garrison had been living by the sword now for
about three decades. He was one of the least known
important army officers in America. He had run covert
operations all over the world - Asia, the Middle East,
Africa, Central America, South America, the Caribbean.
One thing all these missions had in common was they
required cooperation from the locals. They also demanded
a low threshold for bullshit.

The general was a bemused cynic. He had seen just
about everything, and didn't expect much - except from his
men. His gruff informality suited an officer who had begun
his career not as a military academy graduate, but a buck
private. He had served two tours in Vietnam, part of it
helping to run the infamously brutal Phoenix program,
which ferreted out and killed Viet Cong village leaders.
That was enough to iron the idealism out of anybody.
Garrison had risen to general without exercising the more
politic demands of generalship, which called for graceful
euphemism and frequent obfuscation. He was a blunt
realist who avoided the pomp and pretense of upper-
echelon military life. Soldiering was about fighting. It was
about killing people before they killed you. It was about
having your way by force and guile in a dangerous world,
taking a shit in the woods, living in dirty, difficult
conditions, enduring hardships and risks that could - and
sometimes did - kill you. It was ugly work. Which is not to
say that certain men didn't enjoy it, didn't live for it.
Garrison was one of those men. He embraced its cruelty.
He would say, this man needs to die. Just like that. Some
people needed to die. It was how the real world worked.
Nothing pleased Garrison more than a well-executed hit,
and if things went to hell and you had to slug it out, then it
was time to summon a dark relish for mayhem. Why be a
soldier if you couldn't exult in a heart -pounding, balls -out
gunfight? Which is what made him so good.

He inspired loyalty and affection by not taking himself
too seriously. If he told a story - and the general was a
hilarious storyteller - the punch line was usually at his own

expense. He loved to tell about the time he went to great
lengths to hire a rock band (with $5,000 out of his own
pocket) to entertain his troops, mired for months in the
Sinai Desert on a peacekeeping mission, only to have an
unsuspecting soldier cheerfully inform him that the band
'sucked.' He'd shift the cigar stub to the other side of his
mouth and grin sheepishly, ft could even joke about his
own ambition, a rarity in the army. 'If you guys keep
pulling this shit,' he'd whine to his executive staff, 'how’rn I
ever gonna make general?' On his career climb to
leadership of JSOC Joint Special Operations Command)
he'd served a stint as Delta commander. When he arrived at
Bragg as a newly leafed colonel in the mid-eighties, his
crew cut alone invited scorn and suspicion from the D
boys, with their sideburns and facial hair and civilian
haircuts down over their ears. But soon after he started.
Garrison saved their ass. Some of America's secret
supersoldiers were caught double -dipping expenses, billing
both the army and the State Department for their covert
international travel. The scandal could have brought down
the unit, which was despised by the more traditional brass
anyway. The new bullet-headed colonel could have scored
points and greased his own promotional path by expressing
outrage and cleaning house. Instead, Garrison placed his
career in jeopardy by defending the unit and focusing
punishment on only the worst abusers. He'd salvaged a fair
number of professional hides in that caper, and the men
hadn't forgotten. In time, his insouciant Lone Star style and
understated confidence rubbed off on the whole unit. There
were guys from suburban New Jersey who after weeks with
Delta were wearing pointy boots, dipping tobacco, and
drawling like a cowpoke.

Garrison had been living for six weeks now in the JOC,
mostly in a small private office off the operations room
where he could stretch his long legs and prop his boots up
on the desk and shut out all the noise. Noise was one of the
biggest problems in a deal like this. You had to separate out
signals from the noise. There was nothing of the general's
in this private space, no family photos or memorabilia. It

was the way he lived. He could walk out of that building at
a moment's notice and leave behind no personal trace.

The idea was to finish the job and vanish. Until then, it
was an around-the-clock operation. The general had a
trailer out back where he retreated at irregular intervals to
grab about five hours of sleep, but usually he was camped
in this command post, poised, ready to pounce.

Take the previous night, for instance. First they were
informed that Aidid, who had been code-named 'Yogi the
Bear,' was paying a visit to the Sheik Aden Adere
compound, up the Black Sea. A local spy had been told this
by a servant who worked there. So powerful cameras
zoomed in from the Orion, the fat old four-prop navy spy
plane that flew circles high over the city almost
continually, and Garrison's two little observation birds spun
up. The troops pulled on their gear. The Aden Adere
compound was one of their preplanned targets, so the
workup time was nil. But they couldn't commit - or at least
Garrison refused to commit - without firmer intelligence.
The task force had been embarrassed too often already.
Before he launched, Garrison wanted two of the Somali
spies to enter the compound and actually see Aidid. Then
he wanted them to drop an infrared strobe by the target
building. Two informants managed to get in the compound,
but then exited without accomplishing either task. There
were more guards than usual, they explained, maybe forty.
They continued to insist that Aidid was in the compound,
so why didn't the Rangers just move? Garrison demanded
that one of ( them return with the strobe, find Yogi the
fucking Bear, and mark the damn spot. Only now the
informants said they couldn't get back in. It was dark, past
9 P.M., and the gates had been locked for the night. The
guards wanted a password the spies didn't know.

Which was all just bad luck, perhaps. Garrison
reluctantly scratched another mission. The pilots and crews
shut down their helicopters and the soldiers all stripped
back down and went back to their cots.

Then came a late bulletin. The same Somali spies said
Aidid had now left the compound in a three-vehicle convoy

with lights out. One of their number had followed the
convoy west, they said, toward the Olympic Hotel, but lost
it when the vehicles turned north toward October 21st
Road. All of which sounded significant except that the two
OH-5 8s were still in place, equipped with night-vision
cameras that lit up the view like green-tinted noon, and
neither they nor anyone watching the screens back at the
command center were seeing any of this !

'As a result of this, we have experienced some
weariness between [the local spy ring] and the Task Force,'
Garrison wrote out longhand that morning at his desk in his
operations center, venting a little of the frustration that had
built up over forty-three days. The memo was addressed to
Marine General Joseph Hoar, his commander at
CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command, located at MacDill
Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida).

'Generally, [the local spy ring] appears to believe that a
second-hand report from an individual who is not a
member of the team should be sufficient to constitute
current intelligence. I do not. Furthermore, when a [local
spy ring] team member is reporting something that is
totally different than what our helicopters are seeing (which
we watch here back at the JOC), I naturally weigh the
launch decision toward what we actually see versus what is
being reported. Events such as last night, with Team 2
stating that Aidid had just left the compound in a three-
vehicle convoy, when we know for a fact that no vehicles
left the compound... tends to lower our confidence level
even more.'

There had been too many close calls and near misses.
Too much time between missions. In six weeks they'd
launched exactly six times. And several of these missions
had been less than bang-up successes. After that first raid,
when they'd arrested the nine UN employees at the Lig
Ligato compound, Washington had been very upset. Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell would later say, 'I
had to screw myself off the ceiling.' The United States
apologized and all the captives were promptly released.

On September 14, the assault force had stormed what

turned out to be the residence of Somali General Ahmen
Jilao, a close ally of the UN and the man being groomed to
lead the projected Somali police force. The troops were
restless and just wanted to hit something, anything. In this
frame of mind, it didn't take much of an excuse to launch.
When one of the Rangers thought he'd spotted Aidid in a
convoy of cars outside the Italian embassy, the assault
force was rallied and a duly startled General Jilao was
arrested along with thirty-eight others. Again an apology.
All of the 'suspects' were released. In a cable detailing the
debacle for officials in Washington the next day, U.S.
envoy Robert Gosende wrote, 'We understand that some
damages to the premises took place... Gen. Jilao has
received apologies from all concerned. We don’t know if
the person mistaken for Gen. Aidid was Gen. Jiao. It
would be hard to confuse him with Aidid. Jilao is
approximately ten inches taller than Aidid. Aidid is very
dark. Jilao has a much lighter complexion. Aidid is slim
and has sharp, Semitic -like features. Jilao is overweight
and round-faced... We are very concerned that this episode
might find its way into the press.'

That episode didn't, but among official circles the task
force again looked like Keystone Kops. Never mind that
every one of these missions was a masterpiece of
coordination and execution, difficult and dangerous as hell.
So far none of his men had been seriously hurt. Never mind
that their latest outing had netted Osman Atto, Aidid's
moneyman and one of his inner circle. Washington was
impatient. Congress wanted American soldiers home, and
the Clinton administration wanted to remove Aidid as a
player in Somalia. August had turned to September had
turned to October. One more day was one day too long for
the wishes of America and the world to be stymied by this
Mogadishu warlord, this man America's UN Ambassador
Madeleine K. Albright had labeled a 'thug.'

Garrison could ill afford another misstep, even though
caution could mean missing opportunities. He knew that
his superiors and even some people on his own staff
thought he was being too tentative about choosing

missions. With such shaky work on the ground, what could
you expect?

'As a rule, we will launch if [a member of the local spy
ring] reports he has seen Aidid or his lieutenants, our
RECCE [reconnaissance] helo picture approximates what is
being reported, and the report is current enough to be
actionable,' Garrison wrote in his memo to Hoar. 'There is
no place in Mogadishu we cannot go and be successful in a
fight. There are plenty of places we can go and be stupid.'

And just that morning, like manna, the general's rigid
criteria had been met.

Every Sunday morning the Habr Gidr held a rally out
by the reviewing stand on Via Lenin, where they hurled
insults at the UN and its American enforcers. One of the
main speakers that morning was Omar Salad, Aidid's top
political adviser. The clan had not caught on yet that the
Rangers had targeted the entire top rung of Aidid's gang, so
Salad wasn't even trying to hide.

He was one of the UN’s 'Tier One Personalities.' When
the rally broke up, his white Toyota Land Cruiser and some
cars were watched from on high as they drove north toward
the Bakara Market. Salad was observed entering a house
one block north of the Olympic Hotel. At about 1.30 P.M.
came confirmation from a Somali spy who radioed that
Salad was meeting with Abdi 'Qeybdid' Hassan Awale,
Aidid's ostensible interior minister. Two major targets!
Aidid might also be there, but, again, nobody had actually
seen him.

High above, the Orion zoomed its cameras in on the
neighborhood, and the observation choppers took off. They
moved up over the Black Sea to watch the same street. The
TV screens in the JOC showed many people and cars on
the streets, a typical weekend afternoon at the market.

To mark the precise location where Salad and Qeybdid
were meeting, a Somali informant had been instructed to
drive his car, a small silver sedan with red stripes on its
doors, to the front of the hotel, get out, lift the hood, and
peer into it as if he were having engine trouble. This would
give the helicopter cameras a chance to lock on him. He

was then to drive north and stop directly in front of the
target house where the clan leaders had convened. The
informant did as instructed, but performed the check under
his hood so quickly that the helicopters failed to fix on him.

So he was told to do it again. This time he was to drive
directly to the target building, get out, and open the car
hood. Garrison and his staff watched this little drama
unfold on their screens. The helicopter cameras provided a
clear color view of the busy scene as the informant's car
entered the picture driving north on Hawlwadig Road.

It stopped before a building alongside the hotel. The
informant got out and opened the hood. There was no
mistaking the spot.

Word passed quietly to the hangar and the Rangers and
D-boys started kitting up. The Delta team leaders met and
planned out their attack, using instant photo maps relayed
from the observation birds to plan exactly how they would
storm the building, and where the Ranger blocking
positions would be. Copies of the plan were handed out to
all the chalk leaders, and the helicopters were readied. Just
as Garrison was preparing to launch, however, everything
was placed on hold.

The spy had stopped his car short. He was on the right
street, but he'd chickened out. Nervous about moving so
close to the target house, he'd stopped down the street a
ways and opened the hood there. Despite Garrison's finicky
precautions, the task force had been minutes away from
launching an assault on the wrong house.

The commanders all hustled back into the JOC to
regroup. The informant, who wore a small two-way radio
strapped to his leg, was instructed to go back around the
block and this time stop in front of the right goddamn
house. They watched on the screens as the car came back
up Hawlwadig Road. This time it went past the Olympic
Hotel and stopped one block north, on the other side of the
street. This was the same building the observation choppers
had observed Salad entering earlier.

It was now three o'clock. Garrison’s staff informed
General Thomas Montgomery, second in command of all

UN troops in Somalia (and direct commander of the 10th
Mountain Division's ’Quick Reaction Force' [QRF]), that
they were about to launch. Then Garrison sought
confirmation that there were no UN or charitable
organizations (Non-Govemmental Organizations, or
NGOs) in the vicinity - a safeguard instituted after the
arrests of the UN employees in the Lig Ligato raid. All
aircraft were ordered out of the airspace over the target.
The commanders of the 10th Mountain Division were told
to keep one company on standby alert. Intelligence forces
began jamming all radios and cellular phones - Mog had no
regular working phone system.

The general made a last-minute decision to upload
rockets on the Little Birds. Lieutenant Jim Lechner, the
Ranger company's fire support officer, had been pushing
for it. Lechner knew that if things got bad on the ground,
he'd love to be able to call in those rockets - the two pods
on the AH-6s each carried six missiles.

In the quick planning session, Lechner asked again,
'Are we getting rockets today?'

Garrison told him, 'Roger.'

4

Ali Hassan Mohamed ran to the front door of his
father's hamburger and candy shop when the choppers
came down and the shooting started. He was a student, a
tall and slender teenager with prominent cheekbones and a
sparse goatee. He studied English and business in the
mornings and afternoons manned the store, which was just
up from the Olympic Hotel. The front door was across
Hawlwadig Road diagonal from the house of
Hobdurahman Yusef Galle, where the Rangers seemed to
be attacking.

Peering out the doorway, Ali saw American soldiers
sliding down on ropes to the alley that ran west off
Hawlwadig. His shop was on the corner of that street and
the gate to his family's home was just down from there. The

Americans were shooting as soon as they hit the ground,
shooting at everything. There were also Somalis shooting
at them. These soldiers, Ali knew, were different than the
ones who had come to feed Somalis. These were Rangers.
They were cruel men who wore body armor and strapped
their weapons to their chests and when they came at night
they painted their faces to look fierce. Further up
Hawlwadig, to his left about two blocks over, another
group of Rangers were in pitched battle. He saw two of
them drag another who looked dead out of the street.

The Rangers across the street entered a courtyard there
and were shooting out. Then a helicopter came down low
and blasted streams of fire from a gun on its side. The gun
just pulverized his side of the street. Ali's youngest brother,
Abdulahi Hassan Mohamed, fell dead by the gate to the
family's house, bleeding from the head. Abdulahi was
fifteen. Ali saw it happen. Then the Rangers ran out of the
courtyard and across Hawlwadig toward the house of
Hobdurahman Yusef Galle, where most of the other
soldiers were.

Ali ran. He stopped to see his brother and saw his head
broken open like a melon. Then he took off as fast as he
could. He ran to his left, down the street away from the
Rangers and the house they were attacking. At the end of
the dirt alley he turned left and ran behind the Olympic
Hotel. The streets were crowded with screaming women
and children. People were scrambling everywhere, racing
around dead people and dead animals. Some who were
running went toward the fight and others ran away from it.
Some did not seem to know which way to go. He saw a
woman running naked, waving her arms and screaming.
Above was the din of the helicopters and all around the
crisp popping of gunfire.

Out in the streets there were already Aidid militiamen
with megaphones shouting, 'Kasoobaxa guryaha oo iska
celsa cadowga!' ('Come out and defend your homes!')

Ali was not a fighter. There were gunmen, they called
them mooryan, who lived for rice and khat and belonged to
the private armies of rich men. Ali was just a student and

part-time shopkeeper who joined the neighborhood militia
to protect its shops from the mooryan. But these Rangers
were invading his home and had just killed his brother. He
ran with rage and terror behind the hotel and then, turning
left again, back across Hawlwadig Road to the house of his
friend Ahmed, where his AK-47 was hidden. Once he had
retrieved the gun he met up with several of his friends.
They ian back behind the Olympic Hotel, through all the
chaos. Ali told them about his brother and led them back to
his house and shop, determined to exact revenge.

Hiding behind a wall behind the hotel, they fired their
first shots at the Rangers on the corner. Then they moved
north, ducking behind cars and buildings. Ali would jump
out and spray bullets toward the Rangers, then run for
cover. Then one of his friends would do the same.
Sometimes they just pushed the barrels of their guns
around the corners and sprayed bullets without looking.
None of them was an experienced fighter.

The Rangers were better shots. Ali's friend Adan
Warsawe stepped out to shoot and was hit in the stomach
by a Ranger bullet that knocked him flat on his back. Ali
and another friend risked the shooting to drag Adan to
cover. The bullet had punched a hole in Adan's gut and
made a gaping wound out his back that had sprayed blood
on the dirt. When they dragged him it left a smear of blood
on the street. Adan looked both alive and dead, as though
he were someplace in between.

Ali moved on to the next street, leaving Adan with two
friends. He would shoot a Ranger or die trying.

Why were they doing this? Who were these Americans
who came to his neighborhood spraying bullets and
spreading death?

5

After bursting into the storehouse off Hawlwadig,
Sergeant Paul Howe and the three other men on his Delta
team rounded the corner and entered the target building

from the southern courtyard door. They were the last of the
assault forces to enter the house. A team led by Howe's
buddy Matt Rierson had already rounded up twenty-four
Somali men on the first floor, among them two prizes:
Omar Salad, the primary target, and Mohamed Hassan
Awale, Aidid's chief spokesman (not Abdi ’Qeybdid'
Hassan Awale, as reported, but a clan leader of equal
stature).

They were prone and docile and Rierson’s team was
locking their wrists together with plastic cuffs.

Howe asked Sergeant Mike Foreman if anyone had
gone upstairs.

’Not yet,' Foreman said.

So Howe took his four men up to the second floor.

It was a big house by Somali standards, whitewashed
cinder-block walls and windows with no glass in them. At
the top step Howe called for one of his men to toss a
flashbang grenade into the first room. It exploded and the
team burst in as they were trained to do, each man covering
a different firing lane. They found only a mattress on the
floor. As they moved around the room, a volley of
machine-gun fire slammed into the ceiling and wall, just
missing the head of one of Howe's men. They all dropped
down. The rounds had come through the southeast window,
and had clearly come from the Ranger blocking position
just below the window. One of the younger soldiers outside
had evidently seen someone moving in the window and
fired. Obviously some of these guys weren't clear which
building was the target.

It was what he had feared. Howe was disappointed in
the Rangers. These were supposed to be the army's crack
infantry? Despite all the hype and Hoo-ah horse-shit, he
saw the younger men as poorly trained and potentially
dangerous in combat. Most were fresh out of high school!
During training exercises, he had the impression that they
were always craning their necks to watch him and his men
instead of paying attention to their own very important part
of the job.

And the job demanded more. It demanded all you had,

and more... because the price of failure was often death.
That's why Howe and the rest of these D-boys loved it. It
separated them from other men. War was ugly and evil, for
sure, but it was still the way things got done on most of the
planet. Civilized states had nonviolent ways of resolving
disputes, but that depended on the willingness of everyone
involved to back down. Here in the raw Third World,
people hadn't learned to back down, at least not until after a
lot of blood flowed. Victory was for those willing to fight
and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their
thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power
still flowed from the barrel of a gun. If you winted the
starving masses in Somalia to eat, then you had to
outmuscle men like this Aidid, for whom starvation
worked. You could send in your bleeding-heart do-gooders,
you could hold hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs
and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only way
to finally open the roads to the big-eyed babies was to
show up with more guns. And in this real world, nobody
had more or better guns than America. If the good-hearted
ideals of humankind were to prevail, then they needed men
who could make it happen. Delta made it happen.

They operated strictly in secret. The army would not
even speak the word 'Delta.' If you had to refer to them,
they were 'operators,' or The Dreaded D.' The Rangers,
who worshiped them, called them Dboys. Secrecy, or at
least the show of it, was central to their purpose. It allowed
the dreamers and the politicians to have it both ways. They
could stay on the high road while the dirty work happened
offstage. If some Third World terrorist or Columbian drug
lord needed to die, and then suddenly just turned up dead,
why, what a happy coincidence! The dark soldiers would
melt back into shadow. If you asked them about how they
made it happen, they wouldn't tell. They didn't even exist,
see? They were noble, silent, and invisible. They did
America's most important work, yet shunned recognition,
fame, and fortune. They were modern knights and true.

Howe did little to disguise his scorn for lower orders of
soldiering, which pretty much included the whole regular

U.S. Army. He and the rest of the operators lived like
civilians, and that's what they told you they were if you
asked - although spotting them down at Fort Bragg wasn't
hard. You'd meet this guy hanging out at bar around Bragg,
deeply tanned, biceps rippling, neck wide as a fireplug,
with a giant Casio watch and a plug of chaw under his lip,
and he'd tell you he worked as a computer programmer for
some army contract agency. They called each other by their
nicknames and eschewed salutes and all the other
traditional trappings of military life. Officers and noncoms
in Delta treated each other as equals. Disdain for normal
displays of army status was the unit's signature. They
simply transcended rank. They wore their hair longer than
army regs. They needed to pose as civilians on some
missions and it was easier to do that if they had normal
haircuts, but it was also a point of pride with them, one of
their perks. A cartoon drawn by a unit wit showed the
typical D-boy dressed for battle with his hip holster stuffed,
not with a gun, but a hair dryer. Every year they were
obliged to pose for an official army portrait, and for it they
had to get Ranger-style haircuts. They hated it. They'd had
to sit for buzzes before this trip to better blend in with the
Hoo-ahs, and the haircuts had just made them stick out
even more; the sides and backs of their heads were as white
as frog bellies. They were allowed a degree of personal
freedom and initiative unheard of in the military,
particularly in battle. The price they paid for all this, of
course, was that they lived with danger and were expected
to do what normal soldiers could not.

Howe wasn't impressed with a lot of things about the
regular army. He and others in his unit had com-plained to
Captain Steele, the Ranger commander, about his men's
readiness. They hadn't gotten any-where. Steele had his
own way of doing things, and that was the traditional army
way. Howe found the spit-and-polish captain, a massive
former University of Georgia football lineman, to be an
arrogant and incompetent buffoon. Howe had been through
Ranger school and earned the tab himself, but had skipped
straight over the Rangers when he qualified for Delta. He

disdained the Rangers in part because he believed hard,
realistic, stair-stepped training made good soldiers, not the
bullshit macho attitude epitomized by the whole Hoo-ah
esprit. Out of the 120 men who tried out for Delta in his
class (these were 120 highly motivated, exceptional
soldiers), only 13 had made it through selection and
training. Howe had the massive frame of a serious
bodybuilder, and a fine, if impatient, analytical mind. Many
of the Rangers found him scary. His contempt for their
ways colored relationships between the two units in the
hangar.

Now Howe's misgivings about the younger support
troops were confirmed. They were shooting at their own
men! Howe and his team left the room with the mattress
and then moved out to clear the flat roof over the front of
the house. It was enclosed by a three-foot concrete wall
with decorative vertical slats. As the Delta team fanned out
into sunlight, they saw the small orange fireball of an AK-
47 erupt from a rooftop one block north. Two of Howe's
team returned fire as they ducked behind the low wall for
cover.

Then another burst of machine-gun rounds erupted.
There were inch-wide slits in the perimeter wall. Howe and
his men crouched and prayed a round didn't pass through
an opening or ricochet back off the outside of the house.
There were several long bursts. They could tell by the
sound and impact of the rounds that the shots were being
fired by an M60, this time from the northeast Ranger
blocking position. The Rangers were under fire, they were
overeager and scared, so when they saw men with
weapons, they fired. Howe was furious.

He radioed Captain Scott Miller, the Delta ground
commander down in the courtyard. He told him to get
Steele on the radio immediately and tell him to stop his
men from shooting at their own people !

6

Specialist John Stebbins ran as soon as his feet hit the
ground. Just before boarding the helicopter. Captain Steele
had tapped him on the shoulder.

'Stebbins, you know the rules of engagement?'

'Yeah, roger, sir. I know ’em.’

'Okay. I want you to know I'm going to be on the fast
rope right after you, so you better keep moving.’

The prospect of the broad-beamed commander fully
laden with battle gear bearing down on his helmet had
haunted Stebbins the whole flight in. After roping down, he
scrambled so fast from the bottom of the rope that he
collided with Chalk One's M-60 gunner, and they both fell
down. Stebbins lay there for a moment, waiting for the dust
to clear, and then spotted the rest of his team up against a
wall to his right.

He was scared, but thrilled. He couldn't shake the
feeling that this was all too good to be true. Here he was,
an old-timer in the Ranger company at age twenty-eight,
having spent the last four years of his life trying to get into
combat, to do something interesting or important, and now,
somehow, through an incredible chain of pleading,
wheedling, and freakish breaks, he was actually in combat -
him, stubby Johnny Stebbings, the company's chief coffee
maker and training room paper-pusher, at war!

His trip to this Mogadishu back alley had started in a
bagel shop at home in Ithaca, New York. Stebbins was a
short, stocky kid with pale blue eyes and blond hair and
skin so white and freckly it never turned even the faintest
shade darker in the sun. Here in Mog it had just burned
bright pink. He had gone to Saint Bonaventure University,
majoring in communications and hoping to work as a radio
journalist, which he had in fact done for minimum wages at
a few mom-and-pop stations in upstate New York. When
the bagel shop offered to make him head baker, the hourly
wage was enough to chuck his infant broadcasting career.
So he made bagels and dreamed of adventure. Those 'Be

All You Can Be' commercials that came on during football
games spoke straight to his soul. Stebbins had gone to
college on an ROTC scholarship, but the army was so
flooded with second lieutenants when he got out that he
couldn't get assigned to active duty. When Desert Storm
blew up in 1990, as his luck would have it, his National
Guard contract was up. He started looking for a way out of
the kitchen and into the fire. He put his name on three
volunteer lists for Gulf service and never even got a
response. Then he got married, and his wife had a baby,
and suddenly the hourly wage at the bagel shop no longer
covered expenses. What he needed was a medical plan.
That, and some action. The army offered both. So he
enlisted as a private.

'What do you want to do in the army?' the recruiter
asked him.

Stebbins told him, 'I want to jump out of airplanes,
shoot a lot of ammo, and shop at the PX.'

They put him through basic training again - he'd done it
once in the ROTC program. Then he had to do RIP (the
Ranger Indoctrination Program) twice because he got
injured on one of the jumps toward the end and had to be
completely recycled. When he graduated he figured he'd be
out there jumping and training and roping out of
helicopters with the younger guys, except somebody higher
up noticed that his personnel form listed a college degree
and, more importantly, typing ability. He was routed
instead to a desk in the Bravo company training room.
Stebbins became the company clerk.

They told him it would just be for six months. He got
stuck in it for two years. He became known as a good
'training room’ Ranger, and fell prey to all the temptations
of office work. While the other Rangers were out scaling
cliffs and jumping out of planes and trying to break their
records for forced marches through dense cover, old man
Stebby sat behind a desk chain-smoking cigarettes, eating
donuts, and practically inhaling coffee. He was the
company's most avid coffee drinker. The other guys would
make jokes: 'Oh yeah, Specialist Stebbins, he'll throw hot

coffee at the enemy.' Ha, ha. When the company got tapped
for Somalia, no one was surprised when ol' Stebby was one
of those left behind at Fort Benning.

’I want you to know it's nothing personal,' his sergeant
told him, although there was no way to disguise the implied
insult. 'We just can't take you. We have a limited number of
spots on the bird and we need you here.’ How more clearly
could he have stated that, when it came to war, Stebbins
was the least valuable Ranger in the regiment?

It was just like Desert Storm all over again. Somebody
up there did not want John Stebbins to go to war. He
helped his friends pack, and when it was announced the
next day that the force had arrived in Mogadishu, he felt
even more left out than he had two years before as he
watched nightly updates of the Gulf action on CNN. At
least he had company. Sergeant Scott Galentine had been
left behind, too. They moped around for a few days. Then
came a fax from Somalia.

'Stebby, you better grab your stuff,' his commanding
officer told him. 'You're going to war.'

Galentine got the same news. Some Rangers had
received minor injuries in a mortar attack and they needed
to be replaced.

On his way to the airport Stebbins stopped by his house
to say a quick good-bye to his wife. It was the tearful scene
you'd expect. Then when he got to the airport they told him
he could go home, they wouldn't be leaving until the next
day. A half hour after their emotional parting, Mr and Mrs
Stebbins were reunited. He spent the night dreading a
phone call that would change the order.

But it didn't come. A little more than a day later, he and
Galentine were standing on the runway in Mogadishu. In
honor of their arrival they were ordered to drop for fifty
push-ups, a ritual greeting upon entering a combat zone.
Stebby was thrilled. He'd made it!

There weren't enough Kevlar vests (Ranger body
armor) to go around so he got one of the big bulky black
vests the D-boys wore. When he put it on he felt like a
turtle. He was warned not to go outside the fence without

his weapon. His buddies briefed him on the setup. They
told him not to sweat the mortars. Sammy rarely hit
anything. They had been on five missions at that point, and
they were all a piece of cake. We go in force, they told him,
we move quickly, the choppers basically blow everybody
away from the scene, we let the D-boys go in and do their
thing. All we do is provide security. They told him to
watch out for Somalis who hid behind women and children.
Rocks were a hazard. Stebbins was nervous and excited.

Then he got the news. See, they were glad to have him
there and all, but he wouldn't actually be going out with the
rest of the guys on missions. His job would be to stay back
at the hangar and stand guard. Maintain perimeter security.
It was essential. Somebody had to do it.

Who else?

Stebbins took out his ire on the folks trying to get past
the front gate. He took the guard job as seriously as it was
possible to be taken. He was a major pain in the ass. Every
Somali got searched from head to toe, every time, in and
out. He searched trucks and trunks and carts and climbed
up under vehicles and had them open their hoods. It
annoyed him that he couldn't figure out a way to search the
big tanks on the back of the water trucks. Intel had said the
Skinnies were smuggling heavy weapons across the border
from Ethiopia. They were told that the Ethiopians checked
out all trucks. Stebbins doubted they were checking the
water trucks. You could put a lot of RPGs (rocket-
propelled grenades) in the back of one of those things.

He finagled his way onto the helicopters for the pro -file
flights, fastening the chin strap on his helmet tight as they
zoomed low and fast over the city, cheering like kids on a
carnival ride. He figured that was about as close to action
as he was going to get... and compared to manning the
coffeemaker in the training room back at Benning, it wasn't
bad.

Then, this morning, just as the runner from the JOC
showed up to shout, 'Get it on!' one of the squad leaders
strode up with news.

'Stebbins, Specialist Sizemore has an infected elbow.

He just came back from the doc's office. You're taking his
place.'

He would be the assistant for 60-gunner Private First
Class Brian Heard. Stebbins ran through the hangar, trading
in his bulky tortoise-shell vest for a Kevlar one. He'd
stuffed extra ammo in his pouches, and gathered up some
frag grenades. Watching the more experienced guys, he
discarded his canteen -they would only be out an hour or so
- and stuffed its pouch with still more M-16 magazines. He
picked up a belt with three hundred rounds of M-60 ammo,
and debated trying to stuff more in his butt pack, where he
kept the goggles and the gloves he needed for sliding down
the rope. He decided against that. He'd need someplace to
put them when he took them off. He was trying to think
through everything. Trying to stay calm. But damn! it was
exciting.

Talk to me, Steb. What you got? What's on your mind?'
prodded Staff Sergeant Ken Boorn, whose cot was
alongside his. Boorn could see his friend was in a state. He
told him to relax. Keep it simple. His job was to secure
whatever sector they asked him to point his rifle at, and
give ammo to the 60 gunners when they needed it. They
probably wouldn't even need it.

'Okay, fine,' said Stebbins.

Just before heading out to the Black Hawk, Stebbins
was by the front door of the hangar sucking on a last
cigarette, trying to get his nerves under control. This was
finally it, what he'd been aiming for all this time. The guys
all knew this was a particularly bad part of town, too. This
was likely to be their nastiest mission yet, and it was his
first! He had the same feeling in his gut that was there
before his first jump at airborne school. I'm gonna live
through this, he told himself. I'm not gonna die. One of the
D-boys told him, 'Look, for the first ten minutes or so
you're gonna be scared shitless. After that you're going to
get really mad that they have the balls to shoot at you.'
Stebbins had heard the stories about the other missions,
how the Somalis were hit-and-run fighters. There was no
way they'd get in a real shitfight. Up on the profile flights,

they'd never seen any big weapons. This was going to be an
urban small-arms deal. I'm surrounded by guys who know
what they're doing. I'm gonna be okay.

Now, hitting the street outside the target building and
hearing the pop of distant gunfire, he knew he was in it for
real. After untangling himself from the 60 gunner, he ran to
the wall. He was assigned a corner pointing south, guarding
an alley that appeared empty, It was just a narrow dirt path,
barely wide enough for a car, that sloped down on both
sides from mud-stained stone walls to a footpath at the
center. There were the usual piles of random debris and
rusted metal parts strewn along the way, in between
outcroppings of cactus. He heard occasional snapping
sounds in the air around him and assumed it was the sound
of gunfire a few blocks away, even though the noise was
close Maybe the air was playing tricks on him. He also
heard a peculiar noise, a tchew... tchew... tchew, and it
dawned on him that this was the sound of rounds whistling
down the street. That snapping noise? That was bullets
passing close enough for him to hear the little sonic
boomlet as they zipped past.

Up the street from Stebbins, Captain Steele spotted a
likely source for most of the rounds coming through their
position. There was a sniper one block west on top of the
Olympic Hotel. It was the tallest structure around.

Steele bellowed, 'Smith!'

Corporal Jamie Smith came running. He was the best
marksman in the chalk. Steele pointed out the shooter and
slapped Smith's back encouragingly. Both men took aim.
Their target was a long shot away, more than 150 yards.
They couldn't see if they hit him, but after they fired the
Somali on the rooftop was not seen again.

Across the alley, hiding behind the inverted frame of a
burned-out vehicle, squatted Sergeants Mike Goodale and
Aaron Williamson. They were resting their weapons on the
hulk, which sloped down from them toward the center of
the alley. All the alleys rose from the center in uneven
sandy berms to stone courtyard walls and small stone
houses on both sides. There were small trees behind some

of the walls, and just to the north was the boxy shape of the
three-story back side of the target house. The thick rope
they had come down on now lay stretched across the alley.
The earth had that slightly orange color, which stained the
walls and imparted a rusty tint to the air close to the
ground. Goodale could smell and taste the dust mixed with
the odor of gunpowder. He heard the shooting at the other
side of the block, but their corner was still relatively quiet.

Goodale had never felt farther from home in his life,
and had a quiet moment or two crouched at that position to
wonder how he'd gotten there. Just before leaving for
Somalia he'd gotten engaged to a girl named Kira he'd met
in a feckless freshman year at the University of Iowa. They
had both escaped little Pekin, Illinois, for one of the great
party campuses of the Midwest, promptly flunked out, and
then determined to straighten up. For Mike that had meant
joining the army; for Kira it was taking a low-level job
with an advertising agency. They saw each other frequently
when Mike was at Benning, but since the Rangers had been
away on a training exercise in Texas before getting the
summons for Somalia, they had been apart now for more
than two months, since the day they'd decided to spend
their lives together. The day before he'd gotten his first
chance to phone home since leaving Fort Benning, and he'd
gotten the answering machine. He would get another
chance to call tonight and he'd told her on the answering
machine to expect it. He knew she'd be waiting by the
phone.

'Kira, I love you so very much it hurts,' he had written
her that morning. 'I'm reluctant to call again because I
know it will just make me miss you that much more. On
the other hand, I really want to hear your voice.'

A Somali about one hundred yards down the street to
their left stuck his head out from behind a wall and rattled a
burst with an AK-47. Dirt popped up around Goodale and
Williamson. Williamson stepped around to the north side
of the hulk. Goodale, who was closest to the shooter,
panicked momentarily, thinking the shots were coming
from the south. He leapt up and ran from the wreck.

hopping as rounds kicked up around him, trying to find
someplace better to hide. There was no cover. He dove
down behind a pipe sticking up from the road. It was only
about seven inches wide and six inches high and he felt
ridiculous cowering behind it but there was no place else.
When the shooting stopped momentarily he jumped up and
rejoined Williamson behind the hulk, just as the Somali
started shooting again.

Goodale saw the spray of bullets walk up the side of the
car, right down the side of Williamson's rifle, and take off
the end of his friend's finger. Blood splashed up on
Williamson's face and he screamed and cursed. Goodale
leaned over, checking the blood on Williamson's face first
and then his hand.

Despite the blood and pain, Williamson seemed more
angry than hurt.

'If he sticks his head out again I'm taking him,' he said.

Severed fingertip and all, Williamson coolly leveled his
M-16 and waited, motionless, for what seemed like
minutes.

When the man down the alley leaned out, Williamson
fired, and the man's head seemed to explode and he fell
over hard. With his uninjured hand, Williamson and
Goodale exchanged a high five and some victory whoops.

Moments later, they shot and killed another Somali.
The man darted out into their alley and sprinted away from
them. As he ran his loose shirt billowed back to reveal an
AK, so they shot him. About five Rangers squeezed off
rounds at the same time. The man lay on the street only a
half block away and Goodale wondered if they had killed
him. He asked the medic if they should check him out, help
him if he was just injured, and the medic just shook his
head and said, 'No, he's dead.’ It startled Goodale. He had
killed a man, or helped anyway. It troubled him. The man
had not actually been trying to kill him when he fired, so in
the purest sense it wasn't self-defense. So how could he
justify what he had just done? He watched the man in the
dirt, his clothes tangled around him, splayed awkwardly
where the bullets had felled him. A life, like his, ended.

Was this the right thing?

At his corner, about ten yards east of Goodale and
Williamson, Lieutenant Perino watched Somali children
walking up the street toward his men, pointing out their
positions for a shooter hidden around a corner further
down. His men threw flashbang grenades and the children
scattered.

’Hey, sir, they're coming back up,' called machine
gunner Sergeant Chuck Elliot.

Perino was on the radio talking to Sergeant Eversmann
about Blackburn, the Ranger who had fallen from the
helicopter. The lieutenant was relaying Eversmann's
information and questions to Captain Steele, who was
across the street from him. Perino told Eversmann to hold
for a second, stepped out, and sprayed a burst from his M-
16 toward the children, aiming at their feet. They ran away
again.

Moments later, a woman began creeping up the alley
directly toward the machine gun.

'Hey, sir, I can see there's a guy behind this woman with
a weapon under her arm,' shouted Elliot.

Perino told him to shoot. The 60 gun made a low,
blatting sound. The men called the gun a 'pig.'

Both the man and woman fell dead.

7

As he roped in at the northeast corner of the target
block. Specialist John Waddell delayed his descent long
enough to avoid piling into Specialist Shawn Nelson, Chalk
Two's 60 gunner, who usually took a second or two longer
to untangle himself and his big gun. On a training mission
one time Waddell had plowed into the guy beneath him,
and then they'd both been hit by the guy coming after them.
That time he'd bitten his tongue right through.

This time it went well. Waddell got both feet on the
ground and then hurried to a wall on the right side of the
street, just the way that Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso had

drawn it up. Chalk Two was one long block east of where
Sergeant Eversmann's Chalk Four was supposed to have
roped down. The lieutenant was concerned because he
couldn't see Chalk Four. He managed to reach the
embattled sergeant on the radio, and Eversmann explained
how they'd roped in a block north of their position.
DiTomasso sent a team one block north to see if they could
spot Chalk Four from that alley, but they hustled back to
report a large crowd of Somalis was massing in that
direction.

As he ran to take a position against the north wall,
Waddell was surprised to find that all his gear, weapons,
and ammo weren't slowing him down. There was a lot of it,
and it was bulky and heavy. He carried a big weapon, too,
the M-249, or SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). It was a
prestige item, a highly portable machine gun that could
deal death at seven hundred rounds per minute. Normally,
fully kitted up like that, it felt like gravity had doubled. But
Waddell was surprised to find, as he scrambled for a wall,
that his arms and legs felt a little numb, but that was it. He
figured this was adrenaline, from the excitement and fear,
and regarded it with his usual calm detachment.

Waddell was a bit of a loner, a precise young man
whose dark hair looked especially stark in the standard
Ranger buzzcut. After a month of equatorial sun only his
face, neck, and arms were tan. The stupid regs required T-
shirts at all times. He was a newcomer to the rifle
company, another of Bravo's babies, just eighteen years
old. Despite a perfect grade point average in high school
back in Natchez, Mississippi, he had decided, to his
parents' horror, to temporarily forgo college and enlist in
the army, to jump out of airplanes and climb cliffs and
engage in the other high-risk behavior of an elite infantry
unit.

Rangering had met his expectations so far, but it
whetted his appetite for real action. On this deployment to
Mog he had spent most of his time waiting around and
reading. He went through pulp fiction by the box load. Just
today he'd read through to the last chapter of a John

Grisham novel that really had him hooked. He'd found a
quiet spot on top of a Conex container and had planned to
finish it. But then they were called to suit up for a possible
mission. They'd sat out in the bird ready to ride out, only to
have the mission scrubbed. So he'd stripped down and
taken the book back up on the Conex, only to be called
back down again to go on a profile flight. He'd suited up
again, taken the ride, stripped back down, and was back
into the last chapter when they were called for this mission.
It felt like the world was conspiring against his finishing
that novel.

When everybody was down, the rope jettisoned, and the
Black Hawk gone, Waddell's team was ordered by the
lieutenant to set up to help cover Nelson, who had placed
his 'pig' on a bipod at the crest of a slight rise in the road
and was already shooting steadily. The chalk’s two machine
gunners tended to draw most of the fire.

Nelson had been working his gun hard before he'd even
left the helicopter. Looking down from the open doorway
he'd seen a man with an AK step out to the middle of the
street and shoot up through the dust cloud at the bird.
Nelson got off six rounds at the guy and didn't notice if
he'd hit him until he saw him splayed out where he'd been
standing. He figured either he'd hit him or the crew chief
alongside him had scored with the minigun.

Rounds had been snapping around his head when
Nelson came down the rope. Not many, but one bullet
coming at you is too many. It made him mad. It was always
hard to slow his drop down the rope with that big 60 gun
strapped on, and Nelson fell over at the bottom. Staff
Sergeant Ed Yurek had run out to help him to his feet and
guide him to a wall.

'Man, this is getting hairy fast,' Nelson said.

Nelson had set up near the center of the road facing
west. Up to his right was an alley, where he could see
Somalis aiming guns his way. Nelson's gun scattered them,
all but one, an old man with a bushy white Afro, further
down, who seemed so intent on shooting west that he was
unaware of the big gun down the alley to his left. He was

still a little too far away to shoot, but Nelson could see the
man maneuvering in his direction. The 60 gunner knew
what the old man was trying to do. DiTomasso had spread
the word that Chalk Four was stuck one block northwest of
their position. The old man was obviously looking for a
better vantage point to shoot at Eversmann and his men.

'Shoot him, shoot him,’ urged his assistant.

’No, watch,' Nelson said. 'He'll come right to us.'

And, sure enough, the man with the white Afro
practically walked right up to them. He ducked behind a
big tree about fifty yards off, hiding from Eversmann's
Rangers, but oblivious to the threat off his left shoulder. He
was loading a new magazine in his weapon when Nelson
blasted about a dozen rounds into him. They were 'slap'
rounds, plastic-coated titanium bullets that could penetrate
armor, and he saw the rounds go right through the man, but
the guy still got up, retrieved his weapon, and even got off
a shot or two in Nelson's direction. The machine gunner
was shocked. He shot another twelve rounds at the man,
who nevertheless managed to crawl behind the tree. This
time he didn't shoot back.

'I think you got him,’ said the assistant gunner.

But Nelson could still see the Afro moving behind the
tree. The man was kneeling and evidently still alive.
Nelson squeezed off another long burst and saw bark
splintering off the bottom of the tree. The Afro slumped
sideways to the street. His body quivered but he seemed to
have at last expired. Nelson was surprised how hard it
could be to kill a man.

As this was going on, Waddell crept up the rise
cautiously alongside Nelson. Both men lay prone.
Alongside them, Waddell saw the body of the Somali who
had been shot from the helicopter. Looking for a better spot
to cover Nelson, Waddell moved over to a wall on the
south side of the alley. As he did, he saw another Somali
step out from behind a corner to the west and shoot at
Nelson, who was absorbed by his duel with the white Afro.
Waddell shot the man. In books and the movies when a
soldier shot a man for the first time he went through a

moment of soul searching. Waddell didn't give it a second
thought. He just reacted. He thought the man was dead. He
had just folded. Startled by Waddell's shot, Nelson hadn't
seen the man drop. Waddell pointed to where he had fallen
and the machine gunner stood up, lifted his big gun, and
pumped a few more rounds into the man's body to make
sure. Then they both ran for better cover.

They found it behind a burned-out car. Peering out from
underneath toward the north now, Nelson saw a Somali
with a gun lying prone on the street between two kneeling
women. The shooter had the barrel of his weapon between
the women's legs, and there were four children actually
sitting on him. He was completely shielded in
noncombatants, taking full cynical advantage of the
Americans' decency.

'Check this out, John,' he told Waddell, who scooted
over for a look.

'What do you want to do?' Waddell asked.

'I can't get to that guy through those people.'

So Nelson threw a flashbang, and the group fled so fast
the man left his gun in the dirt.

Several grenades plopped into the alley. They were of
the old Soviet style, which looked like soup cans on a
wooden stick. Some didn't exp lode, but one or two did. The
blasts were far enough away that none of the Rangers was
hit. Nelson screamed to DiTomasso and pointed at the
brick wall on the east side of the road.

He watched the lieutenant and three other Rangers cross
over to a half-open gate, which opened on a parking lot.
DiTomasso lobbed a grenade into the space, and then he
and the other Rangers burst in. They found and took
prisoner four Somalis who had been standing on car roofs
shooting down over the top of the wall.

The fire was not yet intense, but Sergeant Yurek was
amazed at it. At twenty-six, Yurek was a crusty veteran
with a grim sense of humor and a big soft spot for animals,
especially cats. He had a small pride of cats back home in
Georgia, and had adopted a litter of kittens he'd found in
the hangar here in Mog. When the Dboys complained

about the kittens crying and meowing through the night,
and threatened to silence them, Yurek had taken a stand.
Nobody touched the kittens without going through him.

He didn't like the idea of shooting anything or anybody,
but accepted the necessity of it. When people were
shooting at him, then it became necessary. So far in Mog,
the Skinnies would just fire off a wild burst and then run
away, which suited Yurek fine. But this shooting today,
right from the start, was more stubborn. It was also picking
up. Yurek figured this target must really house some high-
priority people. Maybe Aidid himself. Chalk Two was
shooting in three directions at once, west, east, and
especially north. Yurek had picked off a man who had been
firing from a low tower to the northeast. Then one of the
squad's medics shouted from across the street, pointing to a
flimsy tin shed just east of their perimeter at the
intersection.

'Hey, we've got people in the shed!'

Which was very bad news. Yurek sprinted across the
street, and, with the medic, plunged into the front door. He
just about trampled a huddled crowd of terrified children
and a woman who was evidently their teacher.

'Everyone down!' Yurek shouted, his weapon still up
and ready.

The children began to wail with fright, and Yurek
quickly realized he needed to throttle things down a notch.
Tiger in the kitten den.

'Settle down,' he pleaded. 'Settle down!'

But the wailing continued. So, slowly and carefully,
Yurek bent over and placed his weapon on the ground. He
motioned for the teacher to approach him. He guessed she
was about sixteen years old.

'Lay down,' he told her, speaking evenly. 'Lay down,'
gesturing with his hands.

The young woman was hesitant, but she did as told.

Yurek pointed to the children now, gesturing for them
to do the same. They did. Yurek picked up his weapon and
spoke to the teacher, enunciating every word in the way
people will when vainly trying to communicate through a

language barrier.

’Now, you need to stay here. No matter what you see or
hear, stay here.'

She shook her head, and Yurek hoped that meant yes.
As he left, Yurek told the medic to stay by the door to the
shed and make sure nobody else decided to check it out and
enter blasting.

From his position behind the car, peering down one of
the streets at their intersection. Nelson saw a man with a
weapon ride out into the road on a cow. There were about
eight other men around the cow, some with weapons, some
without. It was the strangest battle party he'd ever seen. He
didn't know whether to laugh or shoot at it. He and the rest
of the Rangers at once started shooting. The man on the
cow fell off, and the others ran. The cow just stood there.

And at that moment, a Black Hawk slid overhead and
opened fire with a minigun. The cow literally came apart.
Great chunks of flesh flew up in splashes of blood. When
the minigun stopped and the chopper's shadow passed,
what had been the cow lay in steaming pieces on the road.

As horrific as that was, the presence of those guns
overhead was deeply reassuring to all the men on the
streets. Here they were in a strange and hostile city with
people trying to kill them, riding at them on animals with
automatic weapons, massing from all directions, bullets
snapping past their ears, sights of horror and the smell of
blood and burned flesh mingled with the odor of dust and
dung... and the calm approach of a big Black Hawk with
the rhythmic beat of its rotors and the terrible power of its
guns was a reminder of the invincible force behind them, a
reminder of their imminent release, of home.

Somalis continued to mass to the north. In the distance
it looked like thousands. Smaller groups would probe south
toward Chalk Two's position. One group moved down to
just a block and a half away. Maybe fifteen people. Nelson
tried to direct his machine gun only at those with weapons,
but there were so many people, and those with guns kept
stepping from the crowd to take shots, so that he knew he
either had to just let the gunmen shoot or lay into the

crowd. After a few moments of debate, he chose the latter.
That group dispersed, leaving bodies on the street, and
another larger one appeared. They seemed to be coming
now in swarms from the north, as though chased from
somewhere else. They were closing in, just forty or fifty
feet up the road, some of them shooting. This time Nelson
didn't have time to weigh alternatives. He cut loose with
the 60 and his rounds tore through the crowd like a scythe.
A Little Bird swooped in and threw a flaming wall of lead
at it. Those who didn't fall, fled. One minute there was a
crowd, the next minute it was just a bleeding heap of dead
and injured. 'Goddamn, Nelson!’ said Waddell. 'Goddamn!'

8

At the front door of the target house, Staff Sergeant Jeff
Bray, an air force CCT (Combat Control Technician), shot
a Somali man who came running at him wildly firing an
AK-47. Bray was part of a four-man air force special
operations unit made up of experts at coordinating
ground/air communications, like himself, and parajumpers
(PJs), daredevil medics who specialized in rescuing
downed pilots. The other CCT in the unit, Sergeant Dan
Schilling, was with the ground convoy. The two PJs were
aboard the CSAR Black Hawk, along with about a dozen
Rangers and D-boys. Bray was assigned to the Delta
command element that had roped in from a Black Hawk
about a block west of the target house. The man he shot
had just come blazing straight at him from up an alley.
What was he thinking? How could anybody be such a bad
shot?

Behind Bray in the target house, the Delta assaulters
were assembling the Somali prisoners. They were laid out
prone in the courtyard and were being flex-cuffed. In
addition to the two primary targets, in the group was Abdi
Yusef Herse, an Aidid lieutenant. It was an even better haul
than they had hoped for. Checking out other rooms in the
house, Sergeant Paul Howe pumped a shotgun blast into a

computer on the first floor. Sergeant Matt Rierson, whose
men had taken the prisoners, would be responsible for
moving them out to the vehicles. Howe, Sergeant Norm
Hooten, and their teams went back up to the second floor to
help provide cover from the windows and roof.

Back at the JOC, watching images from the aerial
cameras. General Garrison and his staff knew the D-boys'
work was done when they saw Howe's team move back out
on the roof. Other than the Ranger who had fallen, things
had gone like clockwork. The Rangers were holding their
own at the blocking positions. It was 3.50 P.M. The whole
force would be on their way back inside of ten minutes.

9

After the helicopters had lifted off from the Ranger
compound. Sergeant Jeff Struecker had waited several
minutes in his Humvee with the rest of the ground convoy,
engines idling just inside the main gate. His was the lead in
a column of twelve vehicles, nine Humvees and three five-
ton trucks. They were to drive to a point behind the
Olympic Hotel and wait for the D-boys to wrap things up
in the target house.

Struecker, a born-again Christian from Fort Dodge,
Iowa, had more experience with the city than most of the
guys. His vehicle platoon had gone on water runs and other
details daily. He had been in on the invasion of Panama, so
he thought he'd seen the Third World. But nothing prepared
him for Somalia. Garbage was strewn everywhere. They
burned it on the streets, that and tires. They were always
burning tires. It was just one of the mysterious things they
did. They also burned animal dung for fuel. It made for a
potent olfactory stew. The people here, it seemed to
Struecker, just lounged, doing nothing, watching the world
go by outside their shabby round rag huts and tin shacks,
women with gold teeth dressed in brightly colored robes,
old men wearing loose cotton skirts and worn plastic
sandals. Those dressed in Western clothes wore items that

looked like Salvation Army handouts from the disco era.
When the Rangers stopped and searched the men they'd
usually find a thick wad of khat stuffed in their back
pockets. When they grinned their teeth were stained black
and orange from chewing the weed. It made them look
savage, or deranged. To Struecker it was disgusting. It
seemed like such a purposeless existence. The abject
poverty was shocking.

There were places in the city where charitable
organizations handed out food daily, and the Rangers had
been warned not to drive near those places during business
hours. Struecker had come close enough to see why. There
were not just thousands but tens of thousands of people,
throngs who would mob those feeding stations, waiting for
handouts. These were not people who looked like they
were starving. Some of the Somalis fished, but most had
apparently forgotten how to work. Most seemed friendly.
Women and children would approach the Rangers' vehicles
with smiles and their hands out, but in some parts of town
the men would shake their fists at them. A lot of the guys
would throw an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) to kids. They all
felt sorry for the kids. For the adults they felt contempt.

It was hard to imagine what interest the United States of
America had in such a place. But Struecker was just
twenty-four, and he was a soldier, so it wasn't his place to
question such things. His job today was to roll up in force
on Hawlwadig Road, load up prisoners and the assault and
blocking forces, and bring them back out. Directly behind
him was the second Humvee of his team, driven by
Sergeant Danny Mitchell. Behind that was a cargo Humvee
manned by D-boys and SEALs, who would proceed
straight to the target building to reinforce the assault team
already there. Behind the SEAL vehicle was another
Humvee, three trucks, and then five more Humvees,
including one carrying Lieutenant Colonel Danny
Me Knight, who was commanding the convoy. In the front
seat of the Humvee with Struecker was driver Private First
Class Jeremy Kerr. In back were machine gunner Sergeant
Dominick Pilla, a company favorite; Private First Class

Brad Paulson, who was manning the .50-caliber machine
gun up in the turret; and Specialist Tim Moynihan, an
assistant gunner.

Dom Pilla was a big, powerful kid from New Jersey -
he had that Joy-zee accent - who used his hands a lot when
he talked and was just born funny. He loved practical jokes.
He had bought these tiny charges that he stuck in guys’
cigarettes that would explode halfway through a smoke
with a startling pop! Pilla would just crack up. Some
people who tried that kind of thing were annoying, but not
Pilla. People laughed with Pilla. The most famous outlet for
his comedic gifts were the little skits he and Nelson put on,
poking fun at their commanding officers. The skits had
become such a big hit that Nelson and Pilla found
themselves pressed into repeat performances on just about
every deployment. One of the running favorites was their
spoof of 'Coach' Steele.

Like any tough commanding officer, Steele had a
complex relationship with his men. They respected him,
but sometimes he annoyed the hell out of them. Steele had
been a blocker, an offensive guard, on a national
championship Georgia Bulldog team under Coach Vince
Dooley in 1980. Football had been the shaping experience
in the thirty-two-year-old officer's life. Some of the guys
were bugged by his outspoken Christian fervor and
fondness for the football metaphor. He'd call the big guys
in his platoon his 'defensive tackles,' and the little skinny
guys were his 'wide receivers' or 'running backs.' He was
fond of huddling up the guys and having them all put their
hands to the center for a bonding cheer, and would quote
from the pregame speeches of great NFL coaches. He'd
also been infected with the fervent jock Christianity so
much a part of the football subculture. Steele would stop
guys and ask them, 'You go to church on Sundays, son?'
Some of the guys found it all a bit much. They never called
him Coach to his face, except during the skits. Then it was
no-holds-barred.

Nelson was the writer, but Pilla was the star. He was
tall and had a weightlifter's build, but he still needed a few

layers of extra undershirts to approximate Steele's girth.
They would improvise something goofy for the helmet and
paint it with a Bulldog, and Pilla would take it from there.
He had a natural comic presence. The skit would open with
Pilla/Steele alone in his office practicing his blocking and
tackling, and go downhill from there. Steele laughed along
good-naturedly most of the time. But in one of the skits
Nelson and Pilla had suggested, with gratuitous locker-
room hilarity, that there might be something of a don't-ask-
don't-tell thing going on between the captain and his ever
loyal second-in-command. Lieutenant Perino. That had the
guys rolling in the aisle, but this time Coach didn't laugh.
He later chewed out Nelson and Pilla for 'portraying
alternative lifestyles.’ It was so funny, in retrospect, Nelson
and Pilla thought, that it might make a perfect scene for
their next skit.

Struecker and the rest of the column timed their
departure so they wouldn't arrive out behind the Olympic
Hotel before the assault had begun. They had watched the
armada move out over the ocean, and left the base only
after the helicopters radioed that they had turned back
inland. Struecker, who was supposed to lead the convoy,
took a wrong turn. He had studied the photomap back in
the hangar, and thought he had it down, but once out in the
city things tended to get confusing. Every street looked the
same, and there were no signs to help. They were moving
fast. They went northeast on Via Gesira to the K-4 circle
and then north on Via Lenin to the old reviewing stand.
There they would turn right on National Street, proceed
east, and then turn north on a street that paralleled
Hawlwadig heading toward the target house. But when
Struecker took an early left and Mitchell's vehicle
followed, the rest of the convoy didn't.

- Hey, where the hell are you guys? came the voice of
Platoon Sergeant Bob Gallagher over the radio.

'We're coming,' assured Struecker. 'We turned wrong.
We're on our way.'

It was embarrassing. Struecker managed to steer his and
Mitchell's Humvees back through the maze of streets, and

rejoined the rest of the convoy at the hotel.

Before the convoy reached the holding point,
Signalman Chief John Gay, a SEAL in the left rear seat of
the third Humvee, heard a shot and felt a hard impact on
his right hip. Stunned and in pain, he shouted that he'd been
hit. They drove straight on, as planned, to the target
building, where Master Sergeant Tim ’Griz' Martin, the
Delta operator who was sitting beside Gay, jumped out and
came around to have a look. The remainder of the team
fanned out around the vehicles. Martin tore open Gay's
pants and examined his hip, then gave Gay good news. The
round had hit smack on the SEAL'S Randall knife. It had
shattered the blade, but the knife had deflected the bullet.
Martin pulled several bloody fragments of blade out of
Gay's hip and quickly bandaged it. Chy limped out of the
vehicle, took cover, and began returning fire.

Struecker was assigned to evacuate Blackburn, the
Ranger who had fallen from the helicopter. Sergeant Joyce
had fetched help for Blackburn and the men carrying his
litter. The SEAL Humvee, driven by Master Sergeant
Chuck Esswein, had driven up Hawlwadig and the
wounded Ranger was lifted in through the back hatch. Two
medics climbed in with him. Delta Sergeant John
Macejunas took the shotgun seat alongside Esswein.
Struecker's Humvee, with its .50 cal in the turret, took the
lead, and Mitchell's Humvee, which had a Mark-19 rapid-
fire grenade launcher in the turret, brought up the rear.

- This is Uniform Six Four ; McKnight radioed up to the
command bird. I've got a critical casualty. I am going to
send three out, with one in the cargo that has a casualty in
it.

Stmecker told McKnight, 'I'll have him back there in
five minutes.'

The lieutenant colonel said the rest of them would be
coming along soon. The mission was almost over.

The three vehicles began racing back to base through
streets now alive with gunfire and explosions. This time
Struecker knew which way to go. He had mapped a return
route that was simple. Several blocks over was National

Street. They could follow that all the way back down to the
K-4 traffic circle, and from there they would bear right
back to the beach.

Except things had gotten a lot worse. Roadblocks and
barricades began to appear. They drove around and through
them. One of the medics. Private Good, was holding up the
IV bag for Blackburn with one hand while shooting his
CAR-15 with the other. Up in Struecker's Humvee, turret
gunner Paulson was frantically trying to swivel his .50 cal
to engage shooters firing from both sides. So Struecker
instructed his M-60 gunner, Pilla, to concentrate all his fire
to the right, and leave everything on the left to Paulson.
They didn't want to drive too fast, because a violently
bumpy ride couldn't do Blackburn any good.

Pilla was shot as they turned on National. He was killed
instantly. The bullet entered his forehead and the exit
wound blew out the back of his skull. His body flopped
over into the lap of Moynihan, who cried out in horror,
covered with his friend's blood and brain.

Pilla's hit!' he screamed. Just then, over the radio, came
the voice of Sergeant Gallagher.

- How things going?

Struecker ignored the radio, and shouted back over his
shoulder at Moynihan.

'Calm down! What's wrong with him?' He couldn't see
all the way to the back hatch.

'He's dead!'

Moynihan was freaking out.

'How do you know he's dead? Are you a medic?'

Struecker turned for a quick look over his shoulder and
the whole rear of his vehicle was covered with blood. Pilla
was in Moynihan's lap.

'He's shot in the head! He's dead!’ Moynihan said.

'Just calm down,' Struecker pleaded. 'We've got to keep
fighting until we get back.’

To hell with driving carefully. Struecker told his driver
to step on it, and hoped Esswein would follow. He could
see RPGs flying across the street now. It seemed like the
whole city was shooting at them.

Then Gallagher's voice came across again.

- How's it going?

'I don't want to talk about it.' Gallagher didn't like that
answer.

- You got any casualties? 'Yeah, one.'

Struecker tried to leave it at that. Nobody on their side
had gotten killed, so far as he knew, and he didn't want to
be the one to put news like that on the air. He knew radio
operators all over the battlefield could hear their
conversation. There were speaker boxes in some of the
vehicles and the birds could all listen in. The radio
operators on the ground monitored all the bands. Men in
battle drink up information like water - it becomes more
important than water. Unlike most of these guys, Struecker
had been to war before, in Panama and the Persian Gulf,
and he knew soldiers fought better when things were going
their way. Once things turned, it was hard to reassert
control. People panicked. It was happening to Moynihan
right now. Panic was a virus in combat, a deadly one.

- Who is he and what's his status? Gallagher demanded.

'It's Pilla.'

- What's his status?

Struecker held the microphone for a moment, debating
with himself, and then reluctantly answered:

'He’s dead.'

At the sound of that word all the radio traffic, which
was busy, stopped. Long seconds of silence followed.

10

Ali Hussein was minding the Labadhagal Bulal
Pharmacy, well south of all the shooting.

He went to the front steps of the store and saw many
men with guns, Aidid militia, running toward the fight.
Some were militia and some were just neighbors who had
fetched their own guns.

Hussein wanted to see what was happening, but he was
afraid the shop would be looted if he left it untended. He

just stood and listened as the sound of shooting crept down
closer and closer to his street.

Then American army vehicles, three of them, came
racing down his street. The big guns in the back were
shooting. He jumped into the shop and slammed shut the
metal door just as bullets rang off it. He rolled against a
side wall that he knew from previous fighting was the
safest place in the house, and bullets sprayed through
windows into the shop as the vehicles raced past. Then they
were gone and the shooting stopped.

11

The little convoy sped out to the main road and for a
stretch the firing abated and in the distance was the ocean.
But as they approached the port area, there were thousands
of Somalis in the streets. Struecker's heart sank. They were
no longer taking heavy fire, but how was he going to get
his three vehicles through that?

His driver slowed down to a crawl and leaned on the
horn as they entered the throng. Struecker told the driver
not to stop moving. He threw flashbangs out in front of his
vehicle, which chased some of the people away, and then
told his .50-cal gunner to open up over the crowd's head.
The ocean was on the other side. Struecker tried to raise the
doctors on the radio, and couldn't get anyone to pick up, so
he broke in on the command radio net.

'I need the doc right away,' he said.

The sound of the big gun scattered most of the people
and the vehicles sped up again. The Humvee may have run
over some people. It was either that or stones and debris in
the road. Struecker didn't look back to see. He then came
up on a slow-moving pickup truck with people hanging off
the back. It would not get out of their way and there wasn't
enough room to go around it, so Struecker told his driver to
ram it. A man with his leg hanging off the back screamed
with pain as the Humvee hit, and then rolled into the back
of the truck, which finally steered off the road.

Struecker radioed, 'Can you have the doc waiting for us
out there by the gate, over?'

They entered the compound with a tremendous sense of
relief and exhaustion. They had run the gauntlet. Several of
the Rangers in his and the other Humvees had been injured.
Pilla was dead. But, for them, at least, it was over.

His bloodstained crew piled out looking dazed.
Struecker was startled by what he saw at the base. He had
expected to step out into calm and safety. Instead, everyone
around him seemed frantic.

He heard a commander's voice on the speaker box,
shouting at someone, 'Pay attention to what's going on and
listen to my orders!'

Something had happened.

The medical crews descended on their vehicles. One of
the doctors reached in and started to turn Pilla over.

'Don't worry about him,’ Struecker said. 'He's dead.'

So the doctor moved on to Esswein's Humvee to get
Blackburn. Struecker grabbed one of the orderlies as he
went past.

'Look, there's a dead in the back of my vehicle. You
need to get him off.’

The sergeant watched as they pulled Pilla from the back
of the Humvee. The top of his head was gone. His face was
white and distorted and puffed up so bad it looked round. It
didn't look anything like Pilla any more.

12

Private Clay Othic shot a chicken. When it was time for
all the vehicles to move up and start loading prisoners, all
hell broke loose on Hawlwadig. There were people racing
in all directions, men with AK-47s shooting at them, RPGs
zipping smoke trails through the air and detonating with
ear-popping explosions... and in the midst of all this a
panicked flock of chickens came hurtling out in front of
Othic's gun. One of the birds turned to a puff of feathers
when hit by a round from his .50 cal. 'Little Hunter' had

bagged yet another species.

Othic was the smallest guy in the company, and looked
about thirteen, so he was assigned (per standard operating
procedure) to the biggest gun, a 'Ma-Deuce,' the Browning
M-2 .50-caliber machine gun, which was mounted in the
roof turret of his Humvee. Othic had made a bit of a name
for himself early on in the deployment by inadvertently
stealing General Garrison's personal Humvee. The turret on
his own kept sticking and his sergeant told him to trade it in
for another one 'over there,' pointing toward the motor
pool. So Othic had just picked out the one that looked
cleanest. They got it back before the general found out.

They called him 'Little Hunter' because back home
while other guys would head for the bars of Auburn and
Atlanta when they had time off, sometimes during hunting
season Othic, a country boy from Missouri, would vanish
into the woods around Fort Benning with his rifle and come
back with wild turkey or deer, which he would clean right
there in the barracks and deliver up to the mess. He had
that rare capacity of being able to enjoy himself anywhere.
He even enjoyed standing guard duty out front of the
compound, where the most interesting thing was
confiscating film from the bozos who ignored signs
forbidding them to take pictures, which turned out to be
just about everybody with a camera. He had a collection of
unrolled strips of it on the razor wire outside, draped like
brown tinsel.

Othic had been keeping track of the days in Mog in a
small journal he had stashed in his rucksack. He addressed
each entry to his parents, and planned to just give it to them
when he got back. In regard to confiscating film, he wrote
this entry, borrowing some atmospherics from Star Trek:

'Log Entry, Star Date 3 Sept. 1993 1700 hours. Just got
off guard duty at the main gate again, it was a pretty
interesting one though. We confiscated 1 videotape & three
rolls of film in 2 hrs, people aren't allowed to take pictures
of the stuff we have & boy do they have a case of the ass
when they do have it taken away. It's funny 'cause we have
signs up, but they try to be sneaky about it anyway. Ha!

You lose, sucker!'

Othic's fondness for writing made it particularly galling
that he didn't get as many letters as the other guys, and,
most particularly, that he didn't have a girlfriend to
correspond with. Guys without girlfriends were so forlorn
they looked forward to reading the letters their buddies got
from women. Not that all woman letters were good.
Sergeant Raleigh Cash, this guy from Oregon, had gotten a
Dear John letter while he was in Mog. It was a crusher. The
girl sent him a shoebox filled with his stuff, CDs, tapes,
pictures, and other detritus of a dead relationship, a real
double-barreled dump, right there in the hangar. They
teased Cash about it mercilessly, but in a way that made it
easier to take. Still, the feeling was that any letter from a
woman was better than none. Specialist Eric Spalding, a
guy from Missouri who was his best buddy, got some good
ones and let Othic read them. This was nice, but it made
Othic feel pathetic. He was thinking about getting his sister
to write him a real sexy letter just so he'd have something
of his own to show off.

He and Spalding had become good buddies and made a
plan to drive back to Missouri together in Othic's pickup
truck when they got home. Othic's dad worked as an agent
for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and he
planned to try for a job there when he got out of the army.
He told Spalding his dad might help fix him up, too. They
were hoping to get back to Missouri in time for fall deer
season.

Both were jealous of the Dboys. The Rangers had
spent their down time in Mog flying out to shooting ranges,
going on five-mile 'fun' runs, pulling guard duty, etc., while
the operators had serious fun. Take the pigeons. When the
force had first moved in, the pigeons had owned the
hangar, crapping at will all over people, cots, and
equipment. When one of the D-boys got nailed while
sitting on his cot cleaning his weapon, the elite force
declared war. They ordered up pellet guns. The birds didn't
have a prayer. The D-boys would triangulate fire and send
a mess of blood and feathers plopping down on somebody's

cot. Did these guys know how to kill time on a deployment
or what? They all had custom-built weapons with hand-
rifled barrels and such. Gun manufacturers outfitted them
the way Nike supplies pro athletes. Some days Delta would
commandeer a Black Hawk and roar off to hunt wild boar,
baboons, antelope, and gazelles in the Somali bush. They
brought back trophy tusks and game meat and held
cookouts. They called it 'realistic training.’ Now there was a
fucking deal and a half. One of them. Brad Hallings, had
been strutting around the hangar with a necklace made of
boar's teeth. Stocky little Earl Fillmore had taken the tusks
and glued them to a helmet, and he'd strutted around naked
striking poses like some Mongolian warlord.

There was no big game on the horizon for Othic and
Spalding, so they had found something of their own to
hunt. Spalding was a sharpshooter, and most nights his job
was to squat up in a hide high in the rafters, peering out
over the city with a night- vision scope through a grapefruit -
sized hole in the wall. Othic would spend time up there
with him, talking to pass the time. Up in the hide they'd
gotten a closer look than most of the guys at the rats that
were always scampering across the rafters. Mogadishu was
rat heaven; there hadn't been a regular trash pick-up in
recorded history. Othic and Spalding rigged an ingenious
snare out of two Evian water bottles, some trip wire from
their booby traps, and the contents of an MRE. Othic
recorded success in his journal:

'... Good news, The Great White Hunters (me &
Spalding) caught a big nasty ole rat in one of our traps (his
really, but this is a joint operation). The capture of the rat
brought cheers from all.'

What Othic wanted most, more even than to go home,
were more missions. They had come to fight. There had
been a flurry of action in the beginning, but by late
September the pace had slacked off. Othic wrote:

'1830 hours. Another day without a mission & I'm
starting to get pissed. We did go out to the range & shoot
though, as if that's any kind of consolation for us. We also
blew more demo, so I’m starting to become pretty adept at

making different charges & firing systems... We get mail
tomorrow (knock on wood!). 1 know these entries have
been getting more & more boring, but everything is starting
to get too familiar, which is bad because it will lead to
laxness that can be dangerous, ft's hard to keep sharp when
everything gets routine, you know?'

On the night of September 25, the Skinnies shot down a
101st Division Black Hawk. Three crew members were
killed when the downed chopper burst into flames, but the
pilot and copilot escaped. They exchanged fire with
gunmen on the street until friendly Somalis steered them to
a vehicle and got them out.

Othic had been on guard duty that night.

'When 1 came on guard duty at 2 am me & another guy
saw a flaming orange ball moving across the sky, it went
down & there was a big explosion & there was a secondary
explosion,' he wrote. 'Today the flag was at half mast for 3
101st pilots who died in the crash, they were shot down by
an RPG... Later they had a ceremony for our fallen
comrades as they loaded their bodies on the bird home,
makes you realize your mortality.'

Eight days later, in a Humvee turret behind his .50 cal,
Othic didn't have time to ponder his mortality. He was
waiting around the corner a block south of the target
building, listening to the escalating gunfire and itching to
get his big gun into the fight. But his vehicle was the last
one in the ground convoy, so he was pulling rear security,
with his gun facing down the road away from everything.
He was mostly worried about missing out on the shooting.
Then the convoy started moving. As his Humvee made the
turn onto Hawlwadig, he bagged the chicken.

There was so much confusion it was hard for Othic to
orient himself. There were lots of unarmed people in the
streets, so he started off trying to be careful. He hit a
Somali with a gun in the doorway to the hotel. He blasted
another down the alley looking west from the hotel. The
man stopped in the middle of the street and looked over his
shoulder, locking eyes momentarily with Othic. The big .50
cal rounds, which could punch head-size holes in cinder

block, tore the man apart. Othic aimed a few more rounds
at the man's gun in the dirt, trying to disable it. Down the
street to the south he saw people dragging out tires and
debris for a roadblock, so he swung his turret and put a few
rounds down there. They ran.

There was just too much shooting from all directions
for Othic to sort out what was going on. Bullets were
zinging around him and RPGs had started to fly. He would
see a cloud of smoke and a flash and then track the fat arc
of the grenade as it rocketed home. Brass shell casings
were piling up around him in the turret. A Somali round hit
the pile and one of the casings flipped up and stung him in
the face. When two more rounds hit ammo boxes right next
to him, Othic was alarmed. Somebody had a bead on him.
He began shooting everywhere. There was a Ranger saying
that went, 'When the going gets tough, the tough go cyclic.'

Othic's Missouri buddy Eric Spalding was in one of the
five -ton trucks farther up the line. The truck had sandbags
on the floor in back to shield those riding back there from
mines, but other than that it wasn't armored. In the
passenger seat, Spalding figured his best defense was a
good offense, so he started shooting as soon as the convoy
rounded the corner toward the target building. He shot a
man with a gun on the steps of the Olympic Hotel, and
after that targets just kept on coming as fast as he could line
them up and shoot. There wasn't any time to reflect on what
was happening. The gunfight started fast and accelerated.

For Sergeant John Burns, riding in a Humvee behind
Spalding's truck, it was hard at first to grasp the severity of
the fight. He and the rest of the Rangers had expected what
they usually found on these missions, a Somali gunman or
two taking potshots and running. So when he saw a Somali
man fire an RPG from behind a crowd of women. Burns
leapt from the Humvee to give chase, catching his foot on
the lip of the door and falling flat on his face in the dirt. He
scrambled up and ran after the man with the RPG tube, and
when he had a clear bead on him he dropped to one knee
and shot him. The Somali fell and Burns, completely
caught up in his own little chase, ran out and grabbed the

wounded man by the shirt, figuring they'd haul him back
with the other prisoners. But as he began dragging the man
he became aware of how much shooting was going on, and
then, to his horror, spotted ten armed Somalis around the
corner of the hotel.

It dawned on Burns that he was in the middle of a much
bigger fight. He released he wounded man's shirt and
sprinted back to his Hurnvee, where the rest of the men,
hunkered down and firing, eyed him with amazement.

One Humvee back. Private Ed Kallman felt a rush of
adrenaline as he drove around the corner into the melee. He
had joined the army searching for excitement after getting
bored with high school in Gainesville, Florida. You started
off in the army dreading the prospect of actual combat, but
little by little the hard training and discipline of Rangering
made you start wishing for it. And here it was. War. The
real thing. From behind the wheel, watching through the
windshield, Kallman had to remind himself that this wasn't
a movie, and the realization filled him initially with a dark
boyish glee. The smoke trail of an RPG caught the corner
of his eye, and he followed it as it zipped past his vehicle
and exploded into one of the five-tons in front. When the
smoke cleared he saw Staff Sergeant Dave Wilson, one of
the only two black guys in the Ranger company, propped
against the wall of a house alongside the truck. Wilson's
legs were stretched stiff in front of him and were splashed
with bright red blood. Kallman was horrified. One of his
guys! He gripped the steering wheel and focused on the
vehicle in front of his, suddenly eager to get moving again.

From his turret in the rear Humvee, Othic had seen the
flash of the RPG tube. He swung his .50 cal around and
blasted the spot, mowing down a small crowd that had been
standing in front of the shooter. Then what felt like a
baseball bat came down on his right forearm. It felt just like
that. He heard the crack! and felt the blow and looked
down to see a small hole in his arm. The bone was broken.

He shouted, 'I'm hit! I'm hit!'

He really did go cyclic on the .50 cal then, just fired
continually for maybe as long as a minute, taking down

trees and walls and anyone in, around, or behind them,
before Sergeant Lorenzo Ruiz stood up in the turret and
took the gun.

13

At Sergeant Eversmann's intersection, things continued
to go badly for Chalk Four. First Blackburn had fallen out
of the helicopter, then they'd roped in well off target, then
they'd been pinned down so they couldn't get in the right
position. He had sent five guys with the litter carrying
Blackburn, and none of them had come back yet.

Then Sergeant Galentine got hit.

Galentine was a kid from Xenia, Ohio, who had spent
six months operating a press at a rubber-molding plant after
high school before deciding there was more that he could
be. He'd enlisted on the day the Gulf War started and it was
over before he was out of basic training. He'd been waiting
for a chance at a real fight ever since. He'd been crushed
when he and Stebbins had gotten left back on this
deployment. But now, here he was, finally in battle. It had
a strange effect on him. He turned giddy. He and his buddy,
Specialist Jim Telscher, sat behind two cars as rounds
kicked up dirt between them. Telscher had been smacked in
the face by his own rifle coming down the rope and had
blood all over his mouth. Gunfire methodically shattered
the windows on both cars and blew out the tires. Galentine
and Telscher sat behind the rear bumpers making stupid
faces at one another.

Galentine did not feel frightened. It didn't register that
he could get killed. He just pointed his M-16 at someone
down the street, aimed at center mass, and squeezed off
rounds. The man would drop. Just like target practice, only
cooler.

When they started catching rounds from a different
direction, he and Telscher ran to an alley. There, Galentine
came face-to-face with a Somali woman. She had chosen
that moment to dash across the alley, and now stood staring

in horror at Galentine and trying to open a door to get
inside. His first instinct had been to shoot her, but he
hadn't. The woman's eyes were wide. 1 startled him, that
moment. It cut through his silliness. This wasn't a game. He
had come very close to killing this woman. She got the
door open and stepped inside.

He had next taken cover behind another car on the main
road, his rifle braced against his shoulder, the strap slung
around his body. He was picking targets out of a crowd of
hundreds that had massed up the road and was moving
toward their position. As he fired, he felt a painful slap on
his left hand that knocked his weapon so hard it spun
completely around him. His first thought was to right his
gun, but when he reached he saw his thumb flopped on his
forearm, attached only by a strip of skin.

He picked up the thumb and pressed it back to his hand.

'You all right, Scotty? You all right?' asked Telscher.

Eversmann had seen it, the M-16 spinning and a splash
of pink by Galentine's left hand. He saw Galentine reach
for the hand, then look across the road at him.

'Don't come across!’ Eversmann shouted. There was
withering fire coming down the road. 'Don't come across!'

Galentine heard the sergeant but started running
anyway. For some reason, the lanky chalk leader across the
road meant safety. He ran but seemed to be getting
nowhere, like in a dream. His feet were heavy and slow and
if there were bullets flying around him he didn't hear or see
them. He dove the last few feet, rolled over, and leaned up
against the wall alongside Eversmann.

The sergeant was still contending with the crowd.
Down the street behind him there were Humvees in front of
the target building. Up ahead it looked like half the city of
Mogadishu was massing and closing in on them. Men
would dart out into the street and shoot off bursts from
their AKs and then take cover. He could see the telltale
flash and puff of RPGs being launched their way. The
grenades would smoke on in and explode with a long
splash of flame and a pounding concussion. From across
the street the heat of the blast would wash over and leave a

trace of acrid powder smell in his mouth and nose. At one
point so many rounds came flying down the road, kicking
up dirt and chipping the sides of buildings, they created a
wave of noise and energy that the sergeant could actually
see coming. One of the Black Hawks flew over and
Eversmann stood and stretched his long arm in the
direction of the fire. He watched the crew chief in back
sitting behind his minigun and then saw the gun spout lines
of flame at targets up the street and, for a short time, all
shooting from that direction stopped. That's our guys.

To Eversmann's left. Private Anton Berendsen was
lying out on the ground firing his M-203, a grenade-
launcher mounted under the barrel of his M-16. Berendsen
was aiming east at Somalis who would pop out and spray
bullets from behind the rusty tin shacks that protruded at
intervals from the stone walls. Seconds after Galentine
dove in, Berendsen grabbed his shoulder.

’Oh, my God, I'm hit,' he said. He looked up at
Eversmann.

Berendsen scooted over against the wall next to
Galentine with one arm limp at his side, picking small
chunks of debris from his face.

Eversmann squatted down next to both men, turning
first to Berendsen, who was still preoccupied, looking
down the alley east.

’Ber, tell me where you're hurt,' Eversmann said.

'I think I got one in the arm.’

Berendsen began fumbling with his good hand with the
breech of his grenade launcher. He couldn't get it open with
one hand. Eversmann impatiently opened the breech for
him.

'There's a guy right down there,' Berendsen said.

Eversmann was too busy with the wound to look. As he
struggled to lift up Berendsen's vest and open his shirt to
assess the wound, the private shot off a 203 round one-
handed. The sergeant turned to look. It occurred to him he
probably should have fired the round, instead of having
Berendsen attempt it one-handed. He watched the fist-sized
shell spiral through the air toward a shack about forty

meters away. It flattened it in a great flash of light, noise,
and smoke. The shooting from that place stopped.

Berendsen's injury did not look severe. Eversmann
turned to Galentine, who was wide-eyed, like he might be
lapsing into shock. His thumb was hanging down below his
hand.

The sergeant grabbed it and placed it in the palm of
Galentine 's hand.

'Scott, hold this,' he said. 'Just put your hand up and
hold it, buddy.'

Galentine gripped the thumb with his other fingers.

'Hold it up. You'll be all right.'

A medic came running up to tend the wound. When he
saw the severed thumb he dropped the field dressing to the
road. Galentine reached into the medic's kit with his good
hand, removed a clean dressing, and handed it to him. The
injured hand stung. It felt the way it did on a cold day when
you hit a baseball wrong.

'Don't worry Sergeant Galentine, you're gonna be okay,'
said Berendsen, bleeding beside him.

Now Eversmann had only Specialist Dave Diemer, a
SAW gunner, facing east. Diemer was doing the work of
three men, so the sergeant moved over to help him.
Eversmann lifted his M-16, found an armed Somali down
the street, and squeezed off a round. It occurred to him that
this was the first shot he'd fired since roping in.

It was hectic, Eversmann thought, but things were not
too bad just yet. He wrestled to stay calm, keep track of all
these events piling in on him. He took a knee behind a
vehicle alongside Diemer. His mind raced. He had three
Rangers injured, only one critically, and he'd managed to
get him out. Galentine's was not life-threatening, nor was
Berendsen’s.

Glass shattered, showering bits over him and Diemer. A
Somali had run out to the middle of the street just a few
yards away and blasted the car. Diemer dropped behind the
rear wheel on the passenger side and shot him with a quick
burst. The Somali was thrown backward hard to the street
and lay in a rumpled heap.

Eversmann radioed to Lieutenant Perino that he had
taken two more casualties, but they weren’t urgently in
need of evacuation.

'Sergeant Eversmann,' called Telscher, who was across
the road. 'Snodgrass has been shot.'

Specialist Kevin Snodgrass, the machine gunner, had
been crouched behind a car and a round had evidently
skipped off the chassis or ricocheted up from the road.
Eversmann saw Telscher stoop over Snodgrass. The
machine gunner was not screaming. It didn't look dire.

Then Diemer tapped his shoulder.

'Sergeant?'

Eversmann turned wearily. Diemer wore a panicked
expression.

'I think I just saw a helicopter get hit.'

BLACK HAWK DOWN

The convoy asks _
>for directions from
the observation
helicopters- -v

Jr--' \ \ -Jr'S,

--\- McKnightand
Schilling are separated
temporarily from
\ the rest of the convoy.

Convoy
returns
to base.

Twice the convoy
X drives past the

CliffWolcott's
A Crash Site

a' The convoy realizes the \

■ helicopters are sending it v\
' toward the wrong site,^*

The convoy is

the Olympic Hotel. \

Mike Durant’s
Crash Site \

1

Mohamed Hassan Farah heard the helicopters
approaching from the north. They came as always, low and
loud. Usually they came at night. You would hear only the
thrum of their rotors. You never saw them unless they
stopped over your block. Then they would come down so
low the noise beat at your ears and the wash from their
rotors pulled trees out of the sandy ground and sucked tin
roofs right off houses, sending them flipping and groaning
through the air. Even then you could see the helicopters
only in dim outline against a dark sky. They flew black on
black, like death.

This time was different. It was daylight, midafter-noon.
At the sound of them, Farah felt a twinge of panic and
anger. He walked outside and watched them pass swiftly
overhead, stirring the trees and quaking the rooftops. He
knew they were Rangers because Rangers always dangled
their boots from the open doorways. He counted about a
dozen, but they moved too fast for him to be sure. The soft
dry earth under his sandals vibrated.

He had deep wounds that were still healing from an
American helicopter attack three months earlier, on July 12
- months before the Rangers had come. Farah and the
others in his clan had welcomed the UN intervention the
previous December. It promised to bring stability and hope.
But the mission had gradually deteriorated into hatred and
bloodshed. Farah believed the Americans had been duped
into providing the muscle for UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a longtime enemy of the Habr Gidr
and clan leader General Mohamed Farrah Aidid. He
believed Boutros-Ghali was trying to restore the Darod, a
rival clan. Ever since July 12, the Habr Gidr had been at
war with America.

On that morning, the American QRF helicopters,
seventeen in all, had encircled the house of Abdi Hassan
Aw ale, who was called Qeybdid. Inside the house, in a
large second-floor room, were nearly one hundred of his

clansmen, intellectuals, elders, and militia leaders. There
was urgent business to discuss. The Habr Gidr had been
under UN siege for four weeks, ever since a bloody clan
ambush killed twenty -four Pakistani soldiers.

Life had grown hard for the clan, but they were used to
that. The Habr Gidr was an age-old rival of the Darod, the
clan of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who had
ruled Somalia with terror for twenty years. As an Egyptian
diplomat, Boutros-Ghali had worked against Aidid's
revolutionary forces. Barre had been overthrown in 1991,
but the Habr Gidr had been unable to consolidate political
power. Now the same Boutros-Ghali, through the UN, was
again trying to defeat them. This is how they saw it. So
they were living as they had for many years, hiding from
those in power, biding time, and looking for chances to
strike. That day in July, the leadership had gathered to
discuss how to respond to a peace initiative from Jonathan
Howe, the retired American admiral who was then leading
the UN mission in Mogadishu. Men of middle age were
seated at the center of the room on rugs. Elders took chairs
and sofas that had been arranged around the perimeter.
Among the elders present were religious leaders, former
judges, professors, the poet Moallim Soyan, and the clan's
most senior leader. Sheik Haji Mohamed Iman Aden, who
was over ninety years old. Behind the elders, standing
against the walls, were the youngest men. Many of those
present wore Western clothing, shirts and pants, but most
wore the colorful traditional Somali wraparound cotton
skirts called ma-awis.

They were the best-educated members of the clan. Ever
since the collapse of order and government in Somalia
there was little work for intellectuals. So a meeting like this
was a big event, a chance to argue over the direction of
things. Aidid himself was not present. In the weeks since
the UN searched and leveled most of the buildings in his
residential compound, he had been in hiding. Qeybdid and
some of the others present were his close advisers,
hardliners, men with blood on their hands. Some were
responsible for attacks on UN troops, including the

massacre of the Pakistanis. There were also moderates in
the crowd, men who saw themselves as realists. Ruling
impoverished Somalia meant little without friendly ties
with the larger world. The Habr Gidr were enthusiastic
capitalists. Many of the men in this room were
businessmen, eager to resume the flood of international aid
and trading ties with America and European powers. They
were troubled by the obstructionist and increasingly
dangerous game Aidid was playing with the UN. In
Mogadishu's present atmosphere of confrontation, their
arguments were unlikely to prevail, but some in the crowd
at Abdi House were there to argue for peace.

Farah was one of the moderates, a garrulous balding
man in his thirties. He was eager for some kind of
normalcy in his country, and for friendly ties with nations
that could help Somalia. Farah was an engineer, educated
in part in Germany. He saw opportunity in the terrible ruins
of Mogadishu. Before him lay a lifetime of important and
lucrative rebuilding. But he also believed the man who
deserved to lead the country - and the only one who would
steer valuable engineering contracts his way - was his
clansman Aidid. The UN wanted to treat all the warlords
and clans as equals when they were not equal.

Farah was on the perimeter of the room with the
younger men, but instead of standing, he had set himself
down on one knee between two sofas, which probably
saved his life.

The TOW missile is designed to penetrate the armored
hull of a tank. It is a two -stage forty-pound projectile with
fins at the middle and back that trails a copper wire as thin
as a human hair. The wire allows the TOW to be steered in
flight so that it will follow precisely the path of a targeting
laser. Equipped with a shaped charge inside its rounded tip,
on impact it spurts a jet of plasma, molten copper, which
burns through the outer layer of its target, allowing the
missile to penetrate and deliver its full explosive charge
within. The explosion is powerful enough to dismember
anyone standing near it, and hurls deadly sharp metal
fragments in all directions.

What Farah saw and heard was a flash of light and a
violent crack. He stood and took one step forward and
heard the whooosh! of a second missile. There was another
flash and explosion. He was thrown to the floor. Thick
smoke filled the room. He tried to move forward but his
way was blocked by bodies, a bloody pile of men and parts
of men a meter high. Among those killed instantly was the
eldest, Sheik Haji Iman. Through the smoke, Farah was
startled to see Qeybdid, bloody and burned, but still
standing at the center of the carnage.

At another part of the room, Abdullahi Ossoble Barre
was momentarily dazed by the blasts. To him, it looked
liked the men closest to the flash had just evaporated. As
soon as he recovered his wits, he began looking for his son.

Those who had survived the first blast were feeling
along the wall, groping for the door, when the second
missile exploded. The air was thick with dark smoke and
smelled of powder, blood, and burned flesh. Farah found
the stairs, stood, and had taken one step down when a third
missile exploded, disintegrating the staircase. He tumbled
to the first floor. He sat up stunned, and felt himself for
broken bones and wet spots. He saw he was bleeding from
a thick gash in his right forearm. He felt a burning there
and on his back, which had been punctured in several
places with shrapnel. He crawled forward. There was
another explosion above him. Then another and another.
Sixteen missiles were fired in all.

Still trapped upstairs, Barre found his son alive beneath
a pile of mangled bodies. He began pulling men off, and
parts of their bodies came off in his hands. After a great
struggle he managed to free his son, who was
semiconscious, jerking him free by the legs. Then they
heard Americans from the helicopters storming the house,
so he and his son lay still among the bleeding and played
dead.

Farah crawled until he found a door to the outside. He
saw one of his clansmen running from the house, and in the
sky he saw the helicopters, Cobras mostly, but also some
Black Hawks. The sky was full of them. Red streams

poured from the Cobras’ miniguns. The men with Farah in
the doorway had a quick decision to make. Some had blood
running from their mouths and ears. They could stay in the
burning house or brave the helicopters' guns outside.

’Let's go out together,' one of the men said. 'Some of us
will live and some will die.’

His wounds had nearly healed in the three months
since. Now, as the armada of American helicopters roared
overhead he was reminded of the shock, pain, and terror.
The sight filled him and his friends with rage. It was one
thing for the world to intervene to feed the starving, and
even for the UN to help Somalia form a peaceful
government. But this business of sending U.S. Rangers
swooping down into their city killing and kidnapping their
leaders, this was too much.

Bashir Haji Yusuf heard the helicopters as he relaxed
with friends at his house, chewing khat and embroiled in
fadikudirir, the traditional Somali afternoon hours of male
discussion and argument and laughter. Today they had
been talking about The Situation, which is about all they
ever discussed anymore. With no government, no courts,
no law, and no university there was no work for lawyers in
Mogadishu, but Yusuf never wanted for argument.

They all stepped out to see. Yusuf, too, saw the legs
dangling and knew it was the Rangers. They all despised
the Rangers, and the Black Hawks, which seemed now to
be over the city continually. They flew in groups, at all
hours of day and night, swooping down so low they
destroyed whole neighborhoods, blew down market stalls,
and terrorized cattle. Women walking the streets would
have their colorful robes blown off. Some had infants tom
from their arms by the powerful updraft. On one raid, a
mother screamed frantically in flex cuffs for nearly a half
hour before a translator arrived to listen and to explain that
her infant had been blown down the road by the landing
helicopters. The residents complained that pilots would
deliberately hover over their roofless outdoor showers and
toilets. Black Hawks would flare down on busy traffic
circles, creating havoc, then power off leaving the crowd

below choking on dust and exhaust. Mogadishu felt
brutalized and harassed.

Yusuf was disappointed in the Americans. He had been
partly educated in the United States, and had many friends
there. What troubled him most was, he knew they meant
well. He knew his friends back in South Carolina, where he
had attended the university, saw this mission to Somalia as
an effort to end starving and bloodshed. They never saw
what their soldiers were actually doing here in the city.
How could these bloody Ranger raids alter things? The
Situation was as old and as complicated as his life. Civil
war had destroyed all semblance of the old order of things.
In this new chaotic Somalia, the shifting alliances and
feuds of the clans and subclans were like the patterns wind
carved in the sand. Often Yusuf himself didn't understand
what was going on. And yet these Americans, with their
helicopters and laser-guided weapons and shock-troop
Rangers, were going to somehow sort it out in a few
weeks? Arrest Aidid and make it all better? They were
trying to take down a clan, the most ancient and efficient
social organization known to man. Didn't the Americans
realize that for every leader they arrested there were dozens
of brothers, cousins, sons, and nephews to take his place?
Setbacks just strengthened the clan's resolve. Even if the
Habr Gidr were somehow crippled or destroyed, wouldn't
that just elevate the next most powerful clan? Or did the
Americans expect Somalia to suddenly sprout full-fledged
Jeffersonian democracy?

Yusuf knew the bile on Aidid's radio station was
nonsense, about how the UN and the Americans had come
to colonize Somalia and wanted to burn the Koran. But in
the months since the Abdi House attack he had come to
share the popular anger toward American forces. On
September 19, after a bulldozer crew of engineers from the
10th Mountain Division was attacked by a band of Somalis,
Cobra helicopters attached to the QRF launched TOW
missiles and cannon fire into the crowd that came to see the
shooting, killing nearly one hundred people. The
helicopters had become an evil presence over the -city.

Yusuf remembered lying in bed one night with his wife,
who was pregnant, when Black Hawks had come. One
hovered directly over their house. The walls shook and the
noise was deafening and he was afraid his roof, like others
in the village, would be sucked off. In the racket his wife
reached over and placed his hand on her belly.

'Can you feel it?' she asked.

He felt his son kicking in her womb, as if thrashing
with fright.

As a lawyer who spoke fluent English, Yusuf had led a
group of his villagers to the UN compound to complain.
They were told nothing could be done about the Rangers.
They were not under UN command. Soon every death
associated with the fighting was blamed on the Rangers.
Somalis joked bitterly that the United States had come to
feed them just to fatten them up for slaughter.

Yusuf saw the armada slow about two kilometers away
to the north, over by the Bakara Market. If they were going
into Bakara, there would be big trouble. The helicopters
circled around the Olympic Hotel.

Right away, he heard the shooting start.

2

Most of the Rangers saw Super Six One going down.

Chalk Two's SAW gunner. Specialist John Waddell,
had started to relax, more or less, on the northeast corner.
He could hear the pop of gunfire at the other chalk
locations around the target block, but after 60 -gunner
Nelson had cut down that crowd of Somalis things had
quieted at their position. Waddell heard Lieutenant
DiTomasso say over the radio that they were getting ready
to move to the vehicles, which meant the D-boys must be
finished in the target house. He'd be back at the hangar with
an hour or two of sunlight left, enough time for him to find
a sunny spot on top of a Conex and finish that Grisham
novel.

Then there was an explosion overhead. Waddell looked

up to see a Black Hawk twisting oddly as it flew.

’Hey, that bird's going down!' shouted one of the men
across the street.

Nelson screamed, 'A bird's been hit! A bird's been hit!'

Nelson had seen the whole thing. He had seen the flash
of the RPG launcher and had followed the smoke trail of
the grenade as it rose up at the tail of Black Hawk Super-
Six One, which was directly overhead.

They all heard the thunderclap. The tail boom of the
bird cracked in the flash and its rotor stopped spinning with
a horrible grinding sound, followed by a coughing chug-
chug-chug. The chopper kept moving forward but
shuddered and started to spin. First slowly, then picking up
speed.

3

Ray Dowdy felt a jolt, nothing too dramatic, but hard
enough to make him bounce in his seat behind the minigun
on the left side of Super Six One. Dowdy had been
maintaining and flying in army choppers for a third of his
life. He knew the Black Hawk about as well as anybody in
the world, and the hit didn't sound or feel too bad.

It was probably an RPG. Ever since they roped in their
load of Dboys, the air had been thick with smoke trails.
This had been a growing concern. The QRF Black Hawk
that had gone down the week before had been hit by an
RPG. It had burst hto flames on impact. That incident
started everybody rethinking the way they'd been doing
things, even though the task force's six missions had gone
without a hitch. Some of the pilots began agitating for more
flexibility, but their commanders wanted them to stick with
the template.

Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott, the pilot of Super-
Six One, was not one to complain about anything. His
unflappable cool had earned him the nickname 'Elvis,' that
and his dead-on impression of the late rock idol. There was
a crude cartoon profile of Presley painted on his cockpit

door, with the words 'Velvet Elvis' underneath. He was a
popular pilot. It was his Black Hawk and crew that had
decided to go on several unauthorized aerial safaris, and
after killing and butchering a two-hundred-pound boar
(Wolcott helped hide the carcass from the commanders),
they went back out and killed about a dozen more to hold a
surprise barbecue for the task force. The shooting got so
furious on that hunt that one of the snipers put a hole
through the Black Hawk’s rotor. Wolcott took the heat,
which was mild, because the pig roast was a huge hit with
the men, who had been eating MREs and cafeteria food for
more than a month. Wolcott brought back a two -hundred-
pound kudu that he himself bagged from the seat of his
Black Hawk - he planned to have the trophy head mounted.
Wolcott was the kind of pilot who would complain to his
crew chiefs that he wished he could change places with
them - 'I have to fly the helicopter while you guys in back
get to have all the fun.’

His exploits were legendary. He had flown secret
missions hundreds of miles behind enemy lines into Iraq
during the Gulf War, refueling in flight, to infiltrate troops
searching for Saddam Hussein’s SCUD missile sites.

When the grenade hit, Super Six One was in a low orbit
over the target area, varying speed between fifty and
seventy knots, trying to avoid moving over the same streets
on every pass.

In back were Dowdy and the other crew chief. Staff
Sergeant Charlie Warren, and four Delta snipers seated on
ammo cans. They were busy selecting targets below, the
crew chiefs with their miniguns and the snipers with their
custom rifles. At first they shot only at armed Somalis who
were moving toward the target area, but as the volume of
fire intensified they'd begun targeting anyone with a
weapon. Since many of the armed men stayed in crowds,
pretty soon Dowdy was mowing down whole crowds of
Sammies.

He felt justified. When the QRF's Black Hawk had gone
down, Somali mobs had mutilated the corpses of the dead
crew chiefs. This being the first mission since then, as a

fellow Black Hawk crewman. Dowdy was in full payback
mode. Whenever he saw a Somali fall under his guns he'd
scream the name of one of the men killed in the crash,
something he had vowed to do. The D-boys in back kept
looking up at him, wondering what he was doing. Dowdy
wasn't being choosey about his targets. He figured anybody
moving toward the fight at that point wasn't bringing
flowers.

He dropped one Somali with the best shot he'd ever
made. One round hit the man in the left buttock and another
splashed into his right upper torso. The man ran but then
stumbled, dropped his gun, and then collapsed in the road.

'Nice shot, Ray,' said pilot Wolcott over the intercom.

When he was close to using the last of his own
ammunition, after expending thousands of rounds, Dowdy
reached across to the right side of the aircraft where
Warren sat, fishing for one of his partner's ammo cans.

'Hey, I've got a guy with an RPG,' said Warren. 'He's
five o'clock moving to six o'clock,' which meant, since the
chopper was in a left -turning orbit, the guy ought to be
showing up on Dowdy's side any second.

He couldn't spot him.

'Is he by a building or something you can describe?’

Warren started to answer when they felt the jolt. Dowdy
had that second or two of feeling all right about it, but
when the chopper started its spin, he knew they were in
trouble. He gripped his seat and looked forward to the
cockpit. Dowdy knew that the correct emergency procedure
for a tail rotor hit was to pull back on the power control
levers, taking the engines off line. This eliminated torque,
which was what caused the craft to spin counter to the
direction of the rotors.

He heard Elvis ask his copilot, Chief Warrant Officer
Donovan 'Bull' Briley:

'Hey, Bull, you gonna pull the PCLs off line or what?'

Wolcott delivered this line in his typically teasing
fashion. Briley was already pulling the levers. He yanked
them back so hard the whole aircraft shook.

The spin continued. The second turnabout was more

violent. This was all happening in seconds but to Dowdy it
seemed much longer.

Elvis made a last radio transmission.

- Six One going down.

Dowdy and Warren shouted at the D-boys in back to
get down and to hold on. The crew chiefs were on seats
that could absorb at least some of the impact, but the
snipers were sitting upright in back without protection. The
impact could crush their spines. The operators scrambled
off the ammo cans and spread-eagled - the better to spread
the impact out over their bodies. As the spin accelerated,
they reached for something to hold on to. One of them.
Sergeant First Class Jim Smith, grabbed hold with one
hand to a bar behind Warren’s seat, and just then the
accelerating spin sent his feet flying out the ade door.
Smith's shoulder wrenched with pain but he hung on.

Dowdy glanced down and noticed he hadn't fastened his
seat belt.

The helicopter clipped the top of a house; then it flipped
over hard and slammed into the alley nose first and tilted
on its left side.

4

Nelson watched dumbstruck as the chopper fell.

'Oh, my God, you guys, look at this,' he shouted. 'Look
at this!'

Waddell gasped, 'Oh, Jesus,' and fought the urge to just
stand and watch the bird go down. He turned away to keep
his eyes on his corner.

Nelson shouted, 'It just went down! It just crashed!'

'What happened?' called Lieutenant DiTomasso, who
came running.

'A bird just went down!' Nelson said. 'We've gotta go.
We've gotta go right now!'

Word spread wildly over the radio, voices overlapping
with the bad news. There was no pretense now of the
deadpan military cool, that mandatory monotone that

conveyed everything under control. Voices rose with
surprise and fear:

- We got a Black Hawk going down! We got a Black
Hawk going down!

- We got a Black Hawk crashed in the city! Six One!

- He took an RPG!

- Six One down!

- We got a bird down, northeast of the target. 1 need
you to move on out and secure that location!

- Roger, bird down!

It was more than a helicopter crash. It cracked the task
force's sense of righteous invulnerability. The Black Hawks
and Little Birds were their trump card in this God-forsaken
place. The choppers, more than their rifles and machine
guns, were what kept the savage mobs at a distance. The
Somalis couldn 't shoot them down!

But they had seen it, the chopper spinning, falling, one
of the D-boys hanging on with one hand, both feet in the
air, riding it down.

5

Super Six One had clipped the roof of Abdiaziz Ali
Aden's house as it crashed. Aden was a slip of a teenager
with thick bushy hair and glossy black skin, one of eleven
children, eight of whom still lived in the house about six
blocks east of the Bakara Market. That Sunday afternoon
most of them were at home, napping or relaxing after a late
lunch, staying out of the hot sun.

Aden had heard the helicopters coming in low, so low
that the big tree that stood in the central courtyard of his
stone house was uprooted. Then he heard shooting to the
west, near Hawlwadig, the big road that passed before the
Olympic Hotel three blocks over. He ran toward the noise,
crossing Marehan Road outside the door and then
Wadigley Road, keeping to the north walls of the alley. The
sky was dark with smoke. As he neared the hotel, the air
around him sizzled and cracked with gunfire. Above him

were helicopters, some with lines of flame coming from
their guns. He ran two blocks with his head down, staying
against the wall, until he saw American trucks and
Humvees, with machine guns mounted on them, shooting
everywhere.

The Rangers wore body armor and helmets with
goggles. Aden could see no part of them that looked
human. They were like futuristic warriors from an
American movie. People were running madly, hiding.
There was a line of Somali men in handcuffs being loaded
onto big trucks. On the street were dead people and a
donkey dead on its side, its water cart still attached and
upended.

It terrified him. As he started back toward his house,
one of the Black Hawks flew over him at rooftop level. It
made a rackety blast, and wash from its rotors swept over
the dirt alley like a violent storm. Through this dust, Aden
saw a Somali militiaman with an RPG tube step into the
alley and drop to one knee.

The militiaman waited until the helicopter had passed
overhead. Then he leaned the tube up and fired at the
aircraft from behind. Aden saw a great flash from the back
end of the tube and then saw the grenade climb and
explode into the rear of the helicopter, cracking the tail. It
began turning, so close that Aden could see the pilot inside
struggling at the controls. It was tilted slightly toward Aden
when it hit the roof of his house with a loud crunch, and
then slammed on its side into the alley with a great
scraping crash in a thick cloud of dust.

Fearing it had crushed his house and killed his family,
he ran back. He found his parents and brothers and sisters
trapped under a broad sheet of tin roof. They had stepped
outside and had been standing against the west wall when
the helicopter hit and the roof came down on them. They
were not badly hurt. Aden worked his way past the huge
black body of the crashed helicopter, which had fallen
sideways so that the bottom faced him. He helped pull the
roof off his family. Afraid that the helicopter would
explode, they all ran across Marehan Road, the wide, rutted

dirt road just out their front door, to a friend's house three
doors up.

When a few minutes passed with no flames and no
explosion, Aden came back to guard his house. In
Mogadishu, if you left your house open and undefended it
would be looted. He entered through the front door and
stood in the courtyard by the uprooted tree. The wall that
faced the alley where the helicopter had fallen was now just
a heap of stones and dusty mortar. Aden saw an American
soldier climb out of the hulk, and then another with an M-
16. He turned and ran back out the door to a green
Volkswagen parked against the wall across the same alley
where the helicopter had fallen. He crawled under it,
curling himself up into a ball.

When the American soldier with the gun rounded the
corner he saw Aden, peered at him closely, probably
looking for a weapon, and then moved on. He stopped near
the front end of the car - Aden could have reached out and
touched the soldier's boots -and pointed his gun at a Somali
man with an M-16 across the wide street. The two men
fired at the same time but neither fell. Then the Somali
man's gun jammed and the American didn't shoot. He ran
over to the wall across Marehan Road, closer, and shot
him. The bullet went in the Somali man's forehead. Then
the American ran over and shot him three more times
where he lay on the road.

As he did this a big Somali woman came running from
a narrow alley beside the house, right in front of the
soldier. Startled, he quickly fired his weapon. The woman
fell face forward, dropping like a sack, without putting out
her arms to break the fall.

More Somalis came now, with guns, shooting at the
American. He dropped to one knee and shot them, many of
them, but the Somalis' bullets also hit him.

Others came out from hiding then, and moved toward
the crash. Then a helicopter landed right on Marehan Road
and these Somalis scattered. It seemed impossible that a
helicopter could fit in such a small space. It was one of the
little ones. The roar of the helicopter was deafening and

dust swirled around. Aden couldn't breathe. Then the
shooting got worse.

One of the pilots was leaning out of the helicopter
aiming his weapon south, toward the crest of the hill.
Another ran from the helicopter toward the one that had
crashed. The shooting was even worse then. It was so loud
that the sound of the helicopter and the guns was just one
ongoing explosion. Bullets hit and rocked the old car. Aden
curled himself up tight and wished he was someplace else.

6

Cameras on the three observation choppers captured the
disaster close-up and in color. General Garrison and his
staff watched on screens at the JOC. They saw Wolcott's
Black Hawk moving smoothly, then a shudder and puff of
smoke near the tail rotor, then an awkward counterrotation
as Super Six One fell, making two slow turns clockwise,
nose up, until its belly bit the top of a stone building and its
front end was cast down violently. On impact, its main
rotors snapped and went flying. The body of the Black
Hawk came to rest in a narrow alley on its side against a
stone wall in a cloud of dust.

There wasn't enough time for anyone to consider all the
ramifications of that crash, but the sick sinking feeling that
came over officers watching on screen went way beyond
the immediate fate of the men on board.

They had lost the initiative. The only way to regain it
now would be to bolster strength at the crash site, but that
would take time and movement, which meant casualties.
There were already casualties on the downed bird. There
was no time to reflect on causes or consequences. If Elvis's
chopper had gone down in flames, the general could just
pull everybody out with the prisoners as planned and
mount a second mission to retrieve the bodies and make
sure the chopper was completely destroyed - there were
sensitive items on the bird that the army didn't want just
anybody to have.

But seeing men climb out of the wreckage, and
watching as the unscripted battle now joined around it, the
ground shifted beneath Garrison's feet. The next moves
were part of a contingency they had rehearsed. Another
Black Hawk would take Super Six One's place over the
target area, and the CSAR bird would move in and drop its
team. Those fifteen men would give emergency medical
treatment and provide some protection for the crash
survivors, but they couldn't hold out long. Already mobs of
Somalis were moving toward the crash site from all
directions. Securing it would take all of the men on the
ground. The mission had been designed for speed: swiftly
in, swiftly out. Now they were stuck. The entire force at the
target building and on the convoy would have to fight their
way to the crash site. They had to move fast, before Aidid's
forces surrounded it and cut it off. If that happened, the
crash survivors and the CSAR team would have no hope.
Delta Force and the Rangers were the best the army had to
offer. Now they were going to be tested.

It was hard to imagine any other force of 150 men
trapped in a hostile city, besieged on all sides by a heavily
armed populace, who had a reasonable chance of surviving.
They were at the eye of a terrible storm. The observation
birds showed burning tires sending tall black columns of
smoke around the perimeter of the contested blocks. Many
thousands of armed Somalis were thronging toward those
plumes from all directions, on vehicles and on foot. People
were erecting barricades and digging trenches across roads,
laying traps for American vehicles, trying to seal them in.
The streets surrounding the target house and crash site were
already mobbed. You could see the ring closing.

Word was sent to the 10th Mountain Division troops
across the city to mobilize immediately. This was going to
be one hell of a gunfight.

7

’We gotta go,’ Nelson told Lieutenant DiTomasso. 'We
gotta go right now.'

From Chalk Two's position at the target block’s
northeast corner. Nelson had gotten a pretty good fix on
where Super Six One had crashed. He could see crowds of
Somalis already running that way.

'No, we've got to stay here,' said the lieutenant.

'There's a crowd over there,' argued Nelson, the
impending disaster overcoming his deference for rank.

'Stand fast,' DiTomasso said.

'I'm going,' said Nelson.

Guns poked out of a window across the street, and just
then he spotted two Somali boys running, one with
something in his hand. Nelson dropped to a knee and fired
a burst with the M-60. Both boys fell. One had been
holding a stick. The other got up and limped for cover.

Specialist Waddell was feeling the same urge to run
toward the crash. They had all heard about the way the
Somalis had mutilated the remains of the men who died in
the previous Black Hawk crash. In the hangar they had
talked it over. They resolved that such a thing would never
happen to their guys.

DiTomasso held Nelson back. He raised Captain Steele
on the radio.

'I know where it is. I'm leaving,' the lieutenant said.

'No, wait,' said Steele. He could understand the urge to
go help, but if Chalk Two just took off, the target building
perimeter would break down. He tried to get on the
command net, but the airwaves were so busy he couldn't be
heard.

He waited fifteen seconds.

'We need to go!' Nelson was shouting at DiTomasso.
'Now!'

As he started running, Steele called back.

'Okay, go,' he told DiTomasso. 'But I want somebody to
stay.'

DiTomasso shouted, 'All right, Nelson. Make it
happen.'

With some of the men already in pursuit of Nelson, the
lieutenant ran down the street to Sergeant Yurek. He would
leave half the chalk.

'You keep the fight here,' he told Yurek.

Eight Rangers moved at a trot. DiTomasso caught up
with Nelson and his M-60 in front. Waddell was in the rear
with his SAW. They moved with their weapons up and
ready. Somalis took wild shots at them from windows and
doorways as they moved, but no one was hit. Twice on
their way east, Nelson dropped to a knee and opened fire
on the crowd moving parallel to them one block north.

When they rounded the corner three blocks over, there
was a wide sand road that sloped down to the intersection
of the alley where Super Six One lay. Straight in front of
them - and this just astonished Nelson - one of the Little
Birds had landed. Its rotors were turning in a space so small
the tips were just inches from the stone walls.

8

Piloting the Little Bird Star Four One, Chief Warrant
Officers Keith Jones and Karl Maier searched hr and
found the fallen Black Hawk minutes after it went down.
They could tell by the way the front end of the bird had
crumpled that Elvis and Bull were probably dead. Jones
saw one soldier, Staff Sergeant Daniel Busch, on the
ground propped against a wall bleeding from the stomach
with several Somalis splayed on the ground around him.

Landing in the big intersection near Busch would have
been easier, but Jones didn't want to be a fat target from
four different directions. He eased the bird up the street
between two stone houses and set it down on a slope. He
and Maier felt themselves rock back when they touched
down.

As soon as they landed, Sammies came at them. Both
pilots opened fire with handguns. Then Sergeant Smith, the

operator who had hung on with one hand as the Black
Hawk fell, and the second of the two soldiers Abdiaziz Ali
Aden had seen climb out of the wreckage (Busch had been
the first), appeared alongside Jones's window.

Over the din he mouthed to Jones, ’I need help.' His one
arm hung limp. Jones hopped out and followed Smith back
to the intersection, leaving Maier to control the bird and
provide cover up the alley.

Just then. Lieutenant DiTomasso and his men rounded
the corner and came face-to-face with the Little Bird. Maier
nearly shot the lieutenant. When the pilot lowered his
weapon, the startled DiTomasso tapped his helmet,
indicating he wanted a head count on casualties.

Maier gestured that he didn't know.

Nelson and the other Rangers hurried down the slope,
ducking under the blades of the Little Bird. Nelson saw
Busch leaning against a wall one block down with a bad
gut wound. The Delta sniper had his SAW on his lap and a
.45 pistol on the ground in front of him. There were two
Somali bodies nearby. Busch, a devoutly religious man,
had told his mother before leaving for Somalia, 'A good
Christian soldier is just a click away from heaven.’ Nelson
recognized him as the guy who beat all comers in the
hangar at Scrabble. One poor guy had lost forty-one
straight games to him. There was a mass of blood in his lap
now. Busch looked ghostly white, gone.

Nelson shot one of the Somalis on the ground who was
still breathing and then lay behind the bodies for cover. He
picked up Busch's .45 handgun and stuck it in his pocket.
The hulking frame of the Black Hawk was across the wide
road to his right in the alley. Somalis climbing on the
wreckage fled when they saw the Rangers round the corner.

As the rest of the squad fanned out to form a perimeter,
Jones and Smith dragged Busch's limp body toward the
little Bird. Jones helped Smith into the small space behind
the cockpit, and then stooped and lifted Busch to the
doorway, setting him in Smith's lap. Smith wrapped his
arms around the more badly wounded Delta sniper as Jones
tried to apply first aid.

Busch had been shot just under the steel belly plate of
his body armor. His eyes were gray and rolled up in his
head. Jones knew there was nothing he could do for him.

The pilot stepped out and climbed back into his seat. On
the radio he heard air commander Matthews in the C2 bird.

- Four One, come on out. Come out now.

Jones grabbed the stick and told Maier, 'I have it.’ He
told the command net:

- Four One is coming out.

9

Under the steady drone of his rotors, layered deep in the
overlap of urgent calls in his headphones. Chief Warrant
Officer Mike Durant had picked out the voice of his friend
Cliff.

- Six One going down.

Just like that. Elvis's voice was oddly calm, matter-of-
fact.

Durant and his copilot, Chief Warrant Officer Ray
Frank, were circling barren land north of Mogadishu in
Super Six Four, a Black Hawk just like the one Elvis had
been flying. They had two crew chiefs in back. Staff
Sergeant Bill Cleveland and Sergeant Tommie Field,
waiting behind silent guns. For years they had done little
but prepare rigorously for battle, but here they were stuck
in this calm oval flight pattern over sand, a good four-
minute flight from the action.

The shadow of their chopper glided over the flat, empty
landscape. Mogadishu ended abruptly and turned to sand
and scmb brush north of October 21st Road. From there to
the blazing horizon was little but stubby thorn trees, cactus,
goats, and camels in a hazy ocean of sand.

Durant thought about his friends, Elvis and Bull. They
were skilled, veteran warriors. It didn't seem possible that a
motley rabble of Somalis had managed to shoot them out of
the air. Bull Briley had seen action from Korea to the
invasion of Panama. Durant remembered seeing Bull angry

the night before. He'd gotten a chance to phone home, the
first chance in months, and had gotten the damned
answering machine. God, wouldn't it be sad if...

Durant continued his methodical turns. Every time he
banked west it felt like he was flying straight into the sun.

Going down over Mog was bad news but not
catastrophic. It was a contingency. They had practiced it
since their arrival, with Elvis's own helicopter, in fact -
which was weird. It wasn't even that shocking, at least not
to the pilots, who had a finer sense of the risks they ran
than most of the men they flew. Most of the Rangers were
practically kids. They had grown up in the most powerful
nation on earth, and saw these techno-laden, state-of-the-art
choppers as symbols of America's vast military might, all
but invulnerable over a Third World dump like Mog.

It was a myth that had survived the downing of the
QRF's Black Hawk. That was chalked up as a lucky shot.
RPGs were meant for ground fighting. It was difficult and
dangerous, almost suicidal, to point one skyward. The
violent back blast could kill the shooter, and the grenade
would only fly up a thousand feet or so, with a whoosh and
a telltale trail of smoke pointing back to the shooter. So if
the back blast didn't get him one of the quick guns of the
Little Birds surely would. They were all but useless against
a fast-moving, low-flying helicopter, so the logic went.
And the Black Hawk was damn near indestructible. It could
take a hammering without even changing course. It was
designed to stay in the air no matter what.

So most of the foot soldiers who rode in the birds
regarded the downing of a Black Hawk as a one-in-a-
million event. Not the pilots. Since that first Black Hawk
had gone down they'd seen more and more of those
climbing smoke trails and sudden airbursts. Going down
was suddenly notched from possible to probable and
entered their nightmares. Not that it deterred Durant and
the other pilots in the least. Taking risks was what they did.
The 160th SOAR, the Night Stalkers, chauffeured the most
elite soldiers in the U.S. military into some of the most
dangerous spots on the planet.

Durant was a compact man. He was short, fit, dark-
haired, and had this way of standing ramrod straight, feet
set slightly wider than his shoulders, as if daring someone
to knock him down. If he looked better rested than most of
the guys back at the hangar it was because Durant had
searched out a sleeping space in the small cooking area of a
trailer behind the JOC. All the pilots slept in the trailers,
which were relatively luxurious compared to the cots in the
hangar. Given the precision and alertness flying demanded,
not to mention the responsibility for their crew and their
multi-million-dollar high-tech flying machines, Garrison
considered well-rested pilots a priority. Durant had done
better than most. The cooking trailer was air-conditioned.
His part of the deal was he had to break down his bunk
every night and clear the space for the cooks, but it was
well worth the hassle. Durant had been with the Night
Stalkers long enough to be a veteran of dangerous low-
flying night missions in the Persian Gulf War and the
invasion of Panama. He had grown up in Berlin, New
Hampshire, with a reputation for being a cutup and an
athlete, a football and hockey player. Age and experience
had changed him. Many of the people in his neighborhood
in Tennessee, just over the state line from the Night
Stalkers' base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, didn't even
know what he did for a living. His own family often didn't
know where he was.

It was hard to keep track. If Durant wasn't on a real
mission like this one, he was off somewhere in the world
practicing for one. Practice defined the lives of the Night
Stalkers. They practiced everything, even crashing. When
they were done they flew off someplace new and practiced
it again, again, and again. Their moves in the electronic
maze of their cockpits were so well rehearsed they had
become instinctive.

On the day Durant's unit was dispatched to Somalia
they had gotten only two hours' notice. Enough time to
drive home and spend fifteen minutes with his wife, Lorrie,
and year-old son, loey. Never mind that his parents were
due in town the next day for a long-planned, weeklong

visit, that Joey's first birthday was in three days, and Lorrie
was due to resume school-teaching in a week, or that the
house they were tuilding was only half finished (with
Durant playing subcontractor). Lorrie knew better than to
protest. She had just pitched in to help him pack. It wasn't
immediately apparent, but Durant was also an emotional
man. He fit in with his daring aviation unit, men whose
allegiance was as much to action as flag, but the sentiment
he felt for his wife and baby son, who had just started to
crawl, was closer to the surface than with some of these
guys. There were men in his unit who made a show of how
hard it was to leave but who secretly lived for missions and
weren't happy unless in danger. Durant wasn't that way. It
was hard to leave Lorrie and his baby boy, to miss his
parents and the birthday party. He had been looking
forward to it. He phoned his folks to tell them, and to say
how sorry he was. He was not allowed to say where he was
going. There was no time even to write out a list of the
things that needed doing on the new house (he would send
that via E-mail from Mogadishu, way overusing his allotted
number cf bytes in the batch-mailing). Durant stood with
his travel bag in the doorway of their home with that stiff
posture of his, kissed Lorrie good-bye, and went off to war.
Even his leavings were well practiced.

After Elvis crashed, Durant knew three things would
happen quickly. The ground forces would begin moving to
the crash site. Super Six Eight, the CSAR bird, one of the
Black Hawks in the holding pattern with Durant, would be
summoned to deliver a team of medics and snipers. His
bird, Super Six Four, would be asked to fill Elvis's vacant
slot flying a low orbit over the action providing covering
fire.

For now, they waited and circled. On a mission like this
one, with so many birds in the air, breaking discipline
meant becoming a greater hazard than the enemy. For
Durant, the most harrowing part of his mission was done.
Inserting Chalk One, his fifteen-man portion of the ground
force, had meant descending into an opaque cloud of dust
to rooftop level over the target building, avoiding poles and

wires and squinting down through the Black Hawk’s chin
bubble into the brown swirl to stay lined up while the men
slid down ropes to the ground. All Durant could do was
hold blind and steady, and pray that none of the other birds
flitting around him in the cloud got thrown off schedule or
bumped off course. A complex mission like this one was
choreographed as carefully as a ballet, only dangerous as
hell. Guys got killed all the time just training for exercises
like this, much less ducking RPGs and small-arms fire.
Durant had inserted Chalk One without incident. The rest
was supposed to be easy. Now nothing was going to be
easy.

10

Admiral Jonathan Howe's first inkling that something
was amiss in Mogadishu came when air traffic controllers
at the UN compound forced his plane to circle out over the
ocean for a time before landing.

Howe was returning from meetings in Djibouti and
Addis Ababa, exploring a plan for bringing Aidid
peacefully to heel. When they were cleared to land, Howe
saw attack helicopters refueling and uploading ammo on
the tarmac by the Task Force Ranger hangar. When he
landed, Howe telephoned his chief of staff. He was told
about the Ranger raid and the downed helicopter. The aide
told him there was a big fight going on in the city and he
would probably be stuck for a while at the airport.

Howe was a slender, white-haired man whose pale
complexion hadn't even pinked after seven months in
Mogadishu. His staff joked that it was from all those years
aboard submarines, although in Howe's distinguished naval
career he had commanded his share of surface vessels,
everything from battleships to aircraft carriers. Whatever
the cause, he seemed immune to sunlight, even Somalia's.
Aidid's propaganda sheets had dubbed him 'Animal Howe,'
but the envoy's calm, polite manner belied the nickname.
He had served as deputy national security adviser for

President Bush and had helped with the transition in the
White House to the Clinton administration, so impressing
the new team that he had been talked out of a comfortable
Florida retirement to assume the unenviable task of
supervising an even trickier transition in Somalia. He was
Boutros-Ghali's top man in Mog, effectively running the
mission on the ground.

It was not an easy assignment. Howe had slept for
months on a cot in his office on the first floor of the old
U.S. embassy building, which was falling apart. For some
of the time he had a tin-roofed cabin, but regular shellings
generally drove him and the other civilians at the
compound inside the stone walls of the main building.
There were no toilets in the embassy, and so few portable
ones outside, that the men toted plastic bottles to relieve
themselves. They ate three meals a day out of a cafeteria on
the grounds. A story in The Washington Post that suggested
the UN staff enjoyed luxurious accommodations had
provoked bitter laughter.

More than anyone, Howe had been responsible for
bringing the Rangers to Mogadishu. He had pushed his
friends in the White House and Pentagon so hard that
summer for a force to snag Aidid that in Washington they
were calling him 'Jonathan Ahab.’ He was convinced that
getting rid of the warlord - not killing him, but arresting
him and trying him as a war criminal - would cut through
the tangle of tribal hatred that sustained war, anarchy, and
famine.

The state of the city had shocked him when he arrived
eight months earlier. It was a savage place. Everything had
been shot up, nothing worked, everything of value had
been looted, and nobody was in charge. Here was a country
not just at ground zero, but below zero. The very means of
recovery had been destroyed. The hobbled predicament of
the place was reflected in the number of land-mine victims,
men, women, and children pulling themselves around on
crutches. The UN intervention had ended the famine, but
where would Somalia go from there? Efforts to build a
coalition government out of the nation's feuding clans were

still far from successful. Nine out of ten Somalis were
unemployed, and most of those who did work were
employed by the UN and the United States. The factional
fighting had gone beyond anything rational or even
understandable from the admiral's perspective. He felt
contempt for the men responsible, for men like Aidid, Ali
Mahdi, and the other warlords, the very leaders needed to
set Somalia back on its feet.

It soon became clear to Howe that power sharing was
not in the plans of Aidid and his Somalia National Alliance
(SNA), the political/military arm of the Habr Gidr. Having
been the principal engine of Barre's defeat two years
earlier, Aidid and his clan felt it was their turn to rule. They
had purchased that right with blood, the ancient currency of
power. Ali Mahdi and all the other lesser faction leaders
were enthusiastic about nation-building plans. Why
wouldn't they be? The UN was offering them a share of
power they could never wrest from Aidid on their own.

With the 38,000-strong military force of UNITAF
(Unified Task Force) in the country, the backbone being
U.S. Marines and the army's 10th Mountain Division, the
warlords had stopped fighting. But when the last of the
Marines pulled out on May 4 and the 10th was relegated to
backup duties as the QRF, the situation predictably
deteriorated. The worst incident had been the June 5
slaughter of twenty-four Pakistanis. The next day the UN
had pronounced the SNA an outlaw faction. Aidid was
officially dealt out of the nation-building process. Over the
next few weeks, Howe had authorized a $25,000 bounty for
the warlord as gunships flattened Aidid's Radio Mogadishu
and UN troops invaded the warlord's residential compound.
To no avail. The Habr Gidr was insulted by the paltry sum
being offered for its leader. They countered with a defiant
$1 million reward for the capture of 'Animal' Howe. Radio
Mogadishu continued broadcasting its propaganda with
mobile antennae, and the wily old general just melted into
his city.

Aidid had kept up the pressure. From his southern
stronghold, mortar rounds were lobbed daily into UN

compounds. Somali employees of the UN mission were
terrorized and executed. The warlord proved to be a
formidable adversary. His name, Aidid, meant ’one who
tolerates no insult.’ He had been schooled in Italy and the
old Soviet Union and had served as army chief of staff and
then ambassador to India for Siad Barre before turning on
the dictator and routing him. Aidid was a slender, fragile -
looking man with Semitic features, a bald head, and small
black eyes. He could be charming, but was also ruthless.
Howe believed Aidid had two distinct personalities. One
day he was all smiles, a warm, engaging, modern, educated
man fluent in several languages with an open mind and a
sense of humor. Aidid had fourteen children who lived in
America. (One, a son named Hussein, was a Marine
reservist who had come to Somalia with UNITAF forces in
the December intervention.) It was this cosmopolitan side
of Aidid that had encouraged earlier hopes for success. But
the next day, without apparent reason, Aidid's black eyes
would show nothing but hatred. There were times when
even his closest aides avoided him. This was Aidid the son
of a Somali camel herder who had risen to success as a
clever and ruthless killer. He thought nothing of ordering
people killed, even his own people. Howe had evidence
that Aidid's henchmen were inciting demonstrations, then
gunning down their own supporters in order to accuse the
UN of genocide. Aidid had certainly used starvation as a
weapon against rival clans, hijacking and withholding
world food shipments. The warlord also knew the value of
terror - some of the dead Pakistani soldiers had been
disemboweled and skinned.

Howe was outraged, and adamant that Aidid be
stopped. The admiral was accustomed to having his way.
He wasn't a screamer, but once he bit into something he
held on. Many old Africa hands regarded this trait as ill-
suited to this part of the world. In Somalia, warlords who
feuded one day could be warm old friends the next. Howe
was unyielding. If he lacked the means to remove Aidid, he
would get the means. He still had friends, friends in very
high places, friends who owed him, who had talked him

into this job. One of them was Anthony Lake, President
Clinton's national security adviser. Another was Madeleine
Albright, America's emissary to the UN, who was an
unabashed enthusiast of New World Ordering. Flush with
success against Saddam Hussein and the collapse of the
Soviet Union, there were plenty of politicians, diplomats,
and journalists with bright hopes for a new millennium of
worldwide capitalist free markets. America's unrivaled big
stick could right the world's wrongs, feed the hungry,
democratize the planet. But the generals, most notably
outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin
Powell, demanded more solid reasons for getting their
soldiers killed. Howe found some allies in the
administration, but strict opposition from the Pentagon
brass.

When Washington denied Howe's request for Delta in
June, he began a fruitless effort to catch Aidid with the
forces already in place. At first, to avoid harming innocent
people, helicopters with loudspeakers broadcast warnings
of impending UN action, a gesture thought ridiculous by
most Somalis. After administering such a warning, a
multinational force descended on Aidid's compound on
June 17. A house-to-house search was conducted by Italian,
French, Moroccan, and Pakistani troops, and an armored
cordon was thrown around the site by the French and
Moroccans. Aidid easily slipped away. Legend on the
streets had the general rolling out under the noses of UN
troops on a donkey cart, wrapped up in a sheet like a dead
body. The UN was not only incapable of capturing Aidid,
they were turning him into a folk hero.

The decision to attack the Abdi House on July 12
reflected mounting UN frustration. After the Pakistani
ambush, the clan escalated its sniping and mortar attacks.
The Turkish commander of UN troops, General Cevik Bir,
and his second, U.S. Army Major General Thomas
Montgomery, wanted to take the kid gloves off. This would
be an attack without warning, a chance to chop off the
SNA's head. The clan leadership had taken to meeting
regularly at the Abdi House. The plan called for helicopters

to encircle it from the air, fire TOW missiles and cannons
into it, then raid the house to arrest survivors.

Howe opposed it. Why, he asked, couldn't troops
simply surround the place and order those inside to come
out, or why not just storm the house and arrest everybody?
Such approaches would subject the UN forces to too much
risk, he was told. None of the units in -country were capable
of policing a 'sanitized' cordon, so issuing a warning would
be self-defeating. The officials would just flee - as Aidid
had earlier. And the force lacked the capability to perform
the kind of lightning snatch-and-grab tactics used by Delta.
When the Pentagon and White House signed off on the
attack, Howe relented.

The number of Somalis killed in the attack was
disputed. Mohamed Hassan Farah, Abdullahi Ossoble
Barre, Qeybdid, and others present claimed 73 dead,
including women and children who had been on the
building's first floor. They said hundreds were wounded.
The reports Howe got after the attack placed the number of
dead at 20, all men. The International Committee of the
Red Cross set the number of dead at 54, with total
casualties at 250. But the dispute over the number of dead
Somalis was quickly eclipsed by the deaths of 4 Western
journalists who rushed to the Abdi House to report on the
attack, only to be killed by an enraged Somali mob.

The journalists' deaths focused worldwide anger on the
Somalis, but in Mogadishu the shock and outrage was over
the surprise attack. The massacre bolstered Aidid's status,
and badly undercut the UN’s humanitarian image.
Moderates opposed to Aidid now rallied behind him. From
the Habr Gidr's perspective, the UN and, in particular, the
United States, had declared war.

Howe kept pushing for Delta. It was the clearest way
out he could see. At Fort Bragg, teams of Night Stalker
pilots and Delta officers worked up a plan in June that
would require only about twenty men. They would slip into
the country surreptitiously and use the QRF's helicopters
and equipment. An intelligence assessment found Aidid
still making public appearances and moving around

Mogadishu with his conspicuous escort of technicals. But
through July and most of August there was no green light
from Washington.

Howe's pleas won out finally in August, when remote-
controlled land mines first killed four American soldiers
and then, two weeks later, injured seven more. Vacationing
on Martha's Vineyard, President Clinton assented. Delta
would go. Aidid became America's white whale.

Task Force Ranger arrived on August 23 with a three-
phase mission. Phase One, which would last until the
thirtieth, was just to get the force up and running. Phase
Two, which would last until September 7, would
concentrate exclusively on finding and capturing Aidid.
The command staff already suspected this would be futile,
since widespread publicity about the Rangers' intentions
quickly drove Aidid underground. Phase Three would
target Aidid's command structure. This was the meat of
Task Force Ranger's mission. If the D-boys couldn't catch
the warlord, they were going to put him out of business.

Howe had initially envisioned a small unit of stealthy
operators, but he was delighted to get the whole 450-man
task force. He weathered with patience its early missteps.
As September rolled on, despite the glitches, the force
achieved mounting success. Howe was especially pleased
on September 21 when a surprise daylight assault on a
convoy of cars resulted in the capture of Osman Atto, the
arms dealer and Aidid's chief banker, who was now
imprisoned with a growing number of other SNA captives
on an island off the coast of the southern port city of
Kismayo, in pup tents surrounded by razor wire.

Aidid was feeling the heat. A Habr Gidr leader
cooperating with U.S. forces told them, 'He [Aidid] is very
tense. The situation out there is very tense.’ In late August
the Somali warlord sent a letter to former president Jimmy
Carter pleading for him to intervene with President Clinton.
The general wanted an independent commission 'composed
of internationally known statesmen, scholars and jurists
from different countries,' to investigate the allegations that
he was responsible for the June 5 incident - Aidid claimed

it had been a spontaneous uprising of Mogadishu citizens
who feared the UN was attacking Radio Mogadishu. He
also called for a negotiated solution to his standoff with the
UN.

Carter had taken this message to the White House, and
the suggestion was received warmly by Clinton, who
directed that efforts to resolve matters peacefully be
renewed. The State Department began quietly working on a
plan to intercede through the governments of Ethiopia and
Eritrea. The plan called for an immediate cease-fire, and
for Aidid to remove himself from Somalia until the
international inquiry was done. It set a new round of
nation-building talks in November. There were other
feelers being put out in Mogadishu by Howe through Habr
Gidr elders alarmed at the recent turn of events. Howe and
his supporters in Washington were convinced that Aidid's
sudden flexibility was a direct result of Garrison's pressure.

Peace had been the reason for Howe's journey this
weekend. On his long flight over the dry wasteland,
watching the shadow of his plane racing ahead of it across
the dunes, he felt like the UN at last was dealing from a
position of strength.

After circling out over the water for nearly an hour,
Howe's plane was finally cleared to land at the Ranger base
late Sunday afternoon. He knew there was a battle raging,
but he didn't get the full picture until he returned to the UN
compound early that evening. General Montgomery was at
work there piecing together an enormous international
convoy to go in and rescue the downed Rangers and pilots.

There was little for Howe to do but find a place to sit
and observe. Montgomery had his hands full. The
Malaysians and Pakistanis, who had the necessary armor,
wanted no part of the Bakara Market. These were the same
troops that had effectively backed out of the city streets
after the Marines had left. They did want to help, but were
balking at the idea of sending big armored vehicles into the
hornets' nest. In those densely populated neighborhoods,
moving slowly through narrow streets, armor was highly
vulnerable.

The Italians, whose loyalties had been at best suspect
throughout the intervention, were nevertheless ready to
commit, as were the Indians, who had tanks of their own
they could throw into the fight. It would take longer to get
the Italians and Indians into position, so Montgomery was
pushing the Malays and Pakis hard.

Howe couldn't help but wonder what would have
happened if such a determined international response had
greeted the June 5 slaughter of the Pakistani troops, as he
had urged. Still, he was pleased to see it now. It was a
shame the task force had gotten stung, but once the
bleeding stopped, maybe there would be more of an
appetite in Washington to get rid of this upstart warlord
once and for all.

11

Word that there was big trouble in the city spread
quickly through the Somali staff at the U.S. embassy
compound. Abdi Karim Mohamud worked as a secretary
for Brown & Root, one of the American companies
providing support services to the international military
force. He had been a twenty-one-year-old college student
when the Barre regime was toppled. He had furthered his
education on his own ever since. He wore wire -rimmed
glasses, spoke fluent English, wore neatly pressed oxford
blue shirts, and had about him an air of eager, cheerful
efficiency that won him increasing responsibility. He was
also a pair of smart eyes and ears for the Habr Gidr, his
clan.

Abdi had been hopeful about the UN when the
humanitarian mission began. He'd found a job and the
effort seemed good for his country. But when the attacks
began on his clan and General Aidid, and every week there
was a mounting toll of Somali dead and injured, he saw it
as an unwarranted assault on his country. On July 12, the
day of the Abdi House attack, he had seen victims of the
bombing who were brought to the U.S. embassy

compound. The Somali men, elders of his clan, were
bloody and dazed and in need of a doctor. Instead the
Americans photographed them and interrogated them and
then put them in jail. Abdi kept his job but for a different
reason.

He could hear waves of gunfire crackling over the city,
and heard the fight was at the Bakara Market.

At Brown & Root, all Somali employees were sent
home.

'Something has happened,' Abdi was told.

Abdi lived with his family between the market and the
K-4 traffic circle, which was just north of the Ranger base.
The rickety jitneys, so crammed with passengers that the
American soldiers called them 'Kling-on Cruisers' (a nod to
Star Trek), were still running up Via Lenin. The sounds of
gunfire increased and the sky was thick with helicopters
speeding low over the rooftops, flying great looping orbits
over the market area. There were bullets snapping over his
head when he got home. He found his father there with his
two brothers and sister. They were in the courtyard of their
home with their backs against a concrete wall, which was
the place they always went when bullets flew.

It seemed to Abdi that there were a hundred helicopters
in the sky. The shooting was continual and seemed to be
directed everywhere. Aidid's militia would fight from
hundreds of places in the densely populated neighborhood,
not in any one place. So the fight raged in all directions. As
bad as it was, Abdi found that he grew accustomed to the
shooting after a while. It all seemed to be passing overhead
anyway. After waiting an hour or so with his family against
the wall, he grew restless and began moving around the
house, looking out windows. Then he ventured outside.

Some of his neighbors said the Rangers had taken
Aidid. Many people were running toward the fight. Abdi
wanted to see for himself, so he joined the crowds moving
that way. He had relatives who lived just a few blocks from
the Olympic Hotel and he was eager for news of them.
With all the bullets and blasts it was hard to believe anyone
in the market area had not been hit.

When he got close to the shooting there was terrible
confusion on the streets. There were dead people on the
road, men, women, children. Abdi saw an American soldier
up one alley, lying by the road, bleeding from the leg and
trying to hide himself. When a woman ran out in front of
Abdi, the American fired. The woman was hit but got off
the street. Abdi ran around a corner just as one of the Little
Birds zoomed down that alley. He pressed himself against a
stone wall and saw bullets kick up in a line at the alley's
center toward and then past him. Venturing out like this
had been a bad idea. He could not have imagined such
madness. After the helicopter passed, a group of Somali
men with rifles ran to the corner, trying to find a better
angle to shoot at the American.

Abdi ran then to the house of a friend. They let him in
and he got on the floor with everyone else.

12

In the minutes before Super Six One was shot down, the
Rangers and Delta operators back at the target house had
been preparing to leave. It was taking longer than it should
have. First, they had the wounded Ranger, Blackburn, who
had fallen from a Black Hawk. Three Humvees had been
separated from the ground convoy to return Blackburn to
base -Sergeant Pilla had been killed on that ride. After
those three vehicles departed, the convoy just sat.

All of the men had heard veterans talk about 'the fog of
war,' which was shorthand for how even the best-laid plans
went to hell fast once shooting started, but it was shocking
nevertheless to see how hard it was to get even the simplest
things done. Staff Sergeant Dan Schilling, the air force
CCT in the convoy's lead Humvee, finally got fed up
waiting and went looking for what was holding things up.
It turned out the D-boys had been waiting with the
prisoners for some signal from the convoy, while the
convoy had been waiting for the Dboys to come out.
Schilling ran back and forth a few times and finally got

things moving.

Schilling was a laconic man from southern California, a
lean, athletic former army reservist who, eight years earlier,
had gambled his pay grade and rank to join the air force
and see if he could get past the rigorous selection process
for combat controllers. It was a quicker path into special
ops than any the army offered, and it sounded like fun.
CCTs specialized in dropping into dangerous places and
directing pinpoint air strikes from the ground. Since this
mission called for close coordination between forces on the
ground and in the air, Schilling had been assigned to ride
with the convoy commander. Lieutenant Colonel Danny
McKnight. It was exactly the kind of adventure Schilling
had sought. He was now thirty, a six-year veteran of special
ops, and he was earning his danger pay today. He fidgeted
while the flex-cuffed Somalis were packed into one of the
flatbeds. The rest of the assault force had set off on foot for
the crash site. The longer the convoy waited like this out on
the street, the more vulnerable they were. Every minute of
delay gave Aidid's militia and the armed mob time to
amass. There was a noticeably steady increase in the
volume of fire. From the outset they'd assumed a thirty-
minute window. If they could get in and out in that time,
they'd probably be okay. Schilling looked at his watch.
They'd been on the ground now for thirty-seven minutes.

Then Super Six One went down and everything
changed. They were ordered to move to the crash site,
pronto.

There were already wounded men in nearly every
vehicle. Thick smoke was in the air and there was the odor
of gunpowder and flames, and up alleys and in the main
road and before some of the buildings along Hawlwadig
there were Somali bodies and parts of bodies. There were
upended carts and burning riddled hulks of automobiles.
One of the convoy's three flatbed five-ton trucks was
hugely aflame. It had been hit and disabled by an RPG, and
a thermite grenade had been ignited to completely destroy
it. Big holes had been blasted in the whitewashed cinder-
block walls of the Olympic Hotel and surrounding

buildings. Trees had been leveled with gunfire. In the
alleyways and at intersections the sandy soil had soaked up
pools of blood and turned brown. The noise was deafening,
but had increased gradually enough that the men had grown
accustomed to it. A loud snap or the chip of nearby stone
would signal alarm, but the mere sound of gunfire no
longer stopped anyone. They moved cautiously but without
fear in the din. McKnight seemed particularly heedless of
the danger. He strode confidently across streets and up to
men crouched behind cover as though nothing was out of
the ordinary. Shortly he began waving Rangers into the
vehicles.

- This is Uniform Six Four [McKnight]. I am ready for
exfil... 7 am loaded with everything I can get here and I am
ready to move to the crash site, over.

- Roger, go ahead and move [this from Lieutenant
Colonel Gary Harrell, the Delta squadron commander in
the C2 Black Hawk]. The streets are fairly clear. We have
been getting reports of sniper fire from the north of the
crash site.

- Roger. We'll take a right out of here and we'll head
down to the crash site to the east, over.

It sounded simple enough. Two blocks north, three
blocks east. The convoy started rolling, six Humvees and
the two remaining flatbed trucks. There were three
Humvees in front of the tmcks and three behind them. The
trucks had big fluorescent orange panels on top to help the
surveillance birds track them. The helicopters would be
their eyes in the sky. guiding them through the city.

They were driving into the bloodiest phase of the battle.

13

Black Hawk pilot Mike Durant had seen a Little Bird
ascend from the crash site as he swung Super Six Four
back south on its holding pattern. Straight ahead was the
bright white front of the Olympic Hotel, one of the city's
few tall buildings, which was across the street from the

target building. In the far distance was the darkening green
of the Indian Ocean. Smoke rose and drifted over the
rooftops around the hotel, marking the fight. Black Hawks
and Little Birds moved through the dark haze like
predatory insects, darting and firing down into the fray.

Then he heard the expected radio call for Super Six
Eight, the CSAR Black Hawk. He watched it swing away
south.

His own summons from Lieutenant Colonel Matthews
in the command bird came moments later.

- Super Six Four, this is Alpha Five One, over.

- This is Super Six Four. Go ahead.

- Roger, Six Four, come up and join Six Two in his
orbit.

- Six Four is inbound.

Moving in fast and low over the city, Durant caught
glimpses of the action beneath his chopper's chin bubble
through the swirling clouds of smoke and dust. The neat
box-structure they had outlined earlier, with Rangers
positioned on all four corners of the target block, had
completely broken down. It was hard to make sense of the
action below. He could see the general area where Elvis's
bird had gone in, a dense neighborhood of small stone
houses with tin roofs in a Crosshatch of dirt alleyways and
wide cross streets, but the crashed Black Hawk was in such
a tight spot between houses he couldn't spot it. He caught
glimpses of small Ranger columns moving up the dusty
alleys, crouched defensively, rifles up and ready, taking
cover, exchanging fire with the swarms of Somalis who
were also running in that direction. Durant flipped a switch
in the cockpit to arm his crew chiefs' guns, two six-barreled
7.62 mm miniguns capable of firing four thousand rounds
per minute, but warned them to hold fire until they figured
out where all the friendlies were. Durant fell into Elvis's
vacant place in a circular pattern opposite Super Six Two,
the Black Hawk piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Mike
Goffena and Captain Jim Yacone, and began trying to get
in sync with them.

- Six Four, say location, Goffena asked.

- We are about a mile and a half to your north.

- Six Four, keep a good eye on the west side.

- Roger.

The idea was to maintain a 'low cap,' a sweeping circle
over the battle area. On the radio Durant heard that the
CSAR bird had been hit, but had managed to rope in the
rescue team and was still flying. On the radio Goffena and
Yacone were already pointing out targets for Durant's
gunners, but it was hard to get visually oriented. Durant's
seat was on the right side of the airframe, and he was flying
counterclockwise, banking left, so mostly he was seeing
sky. It was maddening. When he leveled off, he was flying
so low and fast that the view down through the chin bubble
was like peering down through a tube. Flashing fast
beneath his feet were rusty tin roofs, trees, burning cars and
tires. There were Rangers and darting Somalis everywhere.
He couldn't tell if he was being shot at. What with the roar
of his engines and the radio din Durant could never tell for
sure if he was being shot at. He assumed he was. Two birds
had been hit already. He was doing all this and listening
and also varying his airspeed and altitude, trying to make
his Black Hawk a more challenging target.

It was on his fourth or fifth circle, just as things were
starting to make sense below, that he felt his chopper hit
something hard.

Like an invisible speed bump.

14

After they had delivered Private Blackburn, the Ranger
who had fallen from the helicopter, to the small rescue
column that would return him to base. Sergeants Jeff
McLaughlin and Casey Joyce had set off north on
Hawlwadig to rejoin their element, Chalk Four. They hadn't
gotten far. They were distracted by a gunman down an
alley who would pop out to shoot and then duck back
before they could return fire. McLaughlin covered the alley
so Joyce could scamper across. Then they both got down

on one knee at opposite sides of it waiting to nail this guy.
From a distance, all the Somali fighters looked the same,
skinny black guys with dusty bushes of hair, long baggy
pants, and loose, oversized shirts. While most of them
would wildly spray bullets and then run, some were
fiercely persistent. Occasionally one would run right out
into the open, blazing away, and invariably be mowed
down. This one was smart. He would lean out just long
enough to take aim and shoot, then duck back behind the
corner. McLaughlin tried to anticipate him. The shooter's
head would appear, the sergeant would squeeze off a well-
aimed round, and the man would duck away again.

McLaughlin was determined to get him. He stayed
down on one knee around a corner trying to hold his M-16
perfectly steady, drawing a bead on the spot down the alley
where the shooter would briefly appear. Sweat stung the
sergeant's eyes. He grew so absorbed in this fruitless duel
that he lost track of time and place and was startled when a
platoon sergeant yelled his name.

'Hey, Mac! Come on!'

The convoy was moving on the street behind him,
rolling north on Hawlwadig. Everybody seemed to be on it
except him. He looked over for Joyce and he was gone, too.
He had already climbed into a vehicle. McLaughlin crossed
the road and trotted along on the far side of one Humvee,
past the contested alley. The Humvee was full.

'Jump on the hood!' shouted one of the men inside.

McLaughlin got one long leg up before it occurred to
him that this was a bad idea. Vehicles were bullet magnets.
He pictured himself threading through this deadly madness
spread-eagled on top of a Humvee. It was bad enough to be
in one of these streets, and quite another to be a six-five
Ranger bull's-eye mounted on top. He ran around the
vehicle and opened the door and insisted that Private Tory
Carlson shove over. Carlson did, and McLaughlin crawled
on the seat and set his M-16 on the rim of the open right
rear window.

About a hundred yards farther up, the convoy came
upon the remainder of Sergeant Eversmann’s beleaguered

Chalk Four. Eversmann and his men had been pinned down
ever since Blackburn fell from the chopper. They had seen
the helicopter crash. When he pulled himself up to his
considerable height, Eversmann could see the wreckage of
Super Six One from one of the angled alleys leading east.
Captain Steele had radioed with orders for the sergeant to
move his chalk down to it on foot.

’Roger,' Eversmann had said... meaning, like, yeah,
right. There was little chance of their moving anywhere. In
the distance he could already see men in helmets and flak
vests and desert uniforms around the wreckage, so he knew
Americans had gotten there. They were near enough for
him to instruct his men to hold their fire in that direction.
He was down to only about four or five men who could still
fight.

The convoy arrived like an answer to his liftoff Hail
Mary. Eversmann saw his friend Sergeant Mike Pringle in
the turret of McKnight's lead Humvee, working the .50 cal
hard with his head down so far he was actually peering out
under the gun. It brought a smile to Eversmann's face in
spite of everything.

’Hey, Sergeant, get in! We're driving to the crash site,'
shouted McKnight.

'Captain Steele wants us to move over on foot; it's right
down there,' said Eversmann, pointing.

'I know,' said McKnight. 'Get in. We're driving over.'

Schilling provided covering fire up Hawlwadig as
Eversmann and his men moved across the road. The chalk
leader herded his men aboard the crowded vehicles,
loading the wounded first, literally piling them in the back
on top of other guys, then finding room for the others. He
was the last man standing on the street as McKnight
shouted for him to hurry up. Eversmann checked off the list
of names in his head, determined to account for every man
in his chalk. He'd lost track of McLaughlin and Joyce and
the medics he'd sent off with Blackburn, but they were not
at his intersection or anywhere down the block. The
column was rolling again. There was nothing for him to do
but leap on the back of one. He landed on somebody, and

found himself flat on his back looking up at the sky,
moving through the streets with Somalis still shooting at
them, realizing what a terrific target he was and that he
couldn't even return fire. I'm going to get shot and there
isn't a damn thing I can do about it. As helpless as he felt,
he was relieved to be back with the others and moving. If
they were together and rolling it meant the end was near.
The crash site was just blocks away. Then he would
position himself better for the ride out.

While Eversmann had been loading his men. Schilling
ran out to the middle of the road to gather up Chalk Four's
two fast ropes, which were still stretched across
Hawlwadig. The task force had been drilled to recover the
three-inch-thick ropes, which were hard to replace. Despite
the gunfire, he fetched one. It was hard work hauling it
back and he was already sweaty and dirty and tired, so
Schilling asked John Gay, a SEAL in the Humvee behind
his, if he'd help him with the other. Gay was crouched
behind cover returning fire. He gave Schilling a shocked
stare and then rolled his eyes.

'Forget the fucking ropes!' he shouted.

It dawned on Schilling that he'd just risked his life for a
long strand of braided nylon. He got back into the Humvee
wondering at himself. As the convoy started up again, the
gunfire was heavier than ever. Rounds pinged off the
armored sides of the vehicles, and every few minutes the
wobbly smoke trail of an RPG would zip past. Schilling
spotted a donkey tied to an olive tree in an alleyway. The
animal stood perfectly still in the maelstrom, clearly
distressed, long ears folded back and tail pointing straight
down. He'd seen the donkey when they first pulled up and
assumed it would eventually be hit. As they pulled away he
caught another glimpse of it, still standing stock still,
unscathed.

Nobody in the rear vehicles knew where they were
going. Many of the men didn't know that a helicopter had
been shot down. One who did not was Eric Spalding, the
Ranger who had designed the successful rat trap back in the
hangar. Spalding was in the passenger seat in the cab of the

second truck, the one with the prisoners. He assumed when
they began moving, that was it. The mission was over.
They were on their way home. Driving was Specialist John
Maddox. They had the front windshield flipped up and out
so Spalding could shoot forward.

He leaned his M-16 out the truck window. Although an
expert marksman, he was no longer just squeezing off one
careful round after the next. There were too many targets,
too many people shooting at him. It was as if 'Kill-an-
American Day' had been declared in Mog. It seemed like
every man, woman, and child in the city was out trying to
get them. There were people in alleyways, in windows, on
rooftops. Spalding kept shooting his rifle dry. Then he
would shoot with his 9 mm Beretta pistol with one hand
while he replaced the rifle magazine with the other. He just
wanted to get the hell out of there. When the column took a
turn to the right, he wondered what was up. The mission is
over. Why aren 't we going back? There wasn't enough time
to find somebody to ask.

After going two blocks east, the convoy made another
right turn. They'd lost track of the men moving to the crash
site on foot. Now the convoy was bearing south, heading
toward the back end of the target house and toward
National Street, the paved road they'd come in on. At least
Spalding thought that was where they were headed. Most
of the streets in Mogadishu looked the same, rutted orange
sand with big gouges in the middle and treacherous
mounds of debris, shabbily mortared stone walls on both
sides, stubby olive trees and cactus bushes and
crisscrossing dirt alleys. The intersections were the
problem. Every time the truck approached an alley
Spalding would lie out across the warm hood and just open
up as they rolled through. He could hear nothing but the
sound of automatic weapons fire and bullets snapping
around him and pinging off the truck.

A woman in a flowing purple robe darted past on the
driver's side of the truck. Maddox had his pistol resting on
his left arm, pretty much shooting at whatever moved.

'Don't shoot,' Spalding shouted. 'She's got a kid!'

The woman abruptly turned. Holding the baby in one
arm, she raised a pistol with her free hand. Spalding shot
her where she stood. He shot four more rounds into her
before she fell. He hoped he hadn't hit the baby. They were
moving and he couldn't see if he had or not. He thought he
probably had. She had been carrying the baby on her arm
right in front. Why would a mother do something like that
with a kid on her arm? What was she thinking? Spalding
couldn't get over it. Maybe she was just trying to get away,
saw the truck, panicked, and raised the gun. There wasn't
time to fret over it.

15

Black Hawk pilot Mike Goffena was coming up behind
Mike Durant's Super Six Four when the grenade hit. It blew
a chunk off the tail rotor. Goffena saw all the oil dump out
of it in a fine mist, but the mechanism stayed intact and
everything seemed to still be functioning.

- Six Four, are you okay? Goffena asked.

The Black Hawk is a heavy aircraft. Durant's weighed
about sixteen thousand pounds at that point, and the tail
rotor was a long way from where he sat. The question came
before he had even figured out what happened. Goffena
explained that he had been hit by an RPG and that there
was damage to the tail area.

'Roger,' Durant radioed back, coolly.

Nothing felt abnormal about the bird at first. He did a
quick check of all his instruments and the readings were all
okay. His crew chiefs, Cleveland and Field, were unhurt in
the back. So after the initial shock, Durant felt relief.
Everything was fine. Goffena told him he had lost his oil
and part of the gearbox on the tail rotor, but the sturdy
Black Hawk was built to run without oil for a time if
necessary, and it was still holding steady. Matthews, the air
mission commander, had also seen the hit from his seat in
the orbiting C2 bird. He told Durant to put the Black Hawk
on the ground, so the pilot of the stricken chopper pulled

out of his left -turning orbit and pointed back to the airfield,
about a four-minute flight southwest. Durant could see the
base off in the distance against the coastline. He noted, just
to be safe, that there was a big green open area about
halfway there, so if he had to land sooner he had a place to
put it. But the bird was flying fine.

Goffena followed Durant for about a mile, to a point
where he felt confident Super Six Four would make it back.
He had just started to turn around when Durant's tail rotor,
the whole thing, the gearbox and two or three feet of the
vertical fin assembly, just turned into a blur and
evaporated.

Inside Super Six Four, Durant and copilot Ray Frank
felt the airframe begin to vibrate. They heard the
accelerating high-speed whine of the dry gear shaft in its
death throes. Then came a very loud bang as it blew apart.
With the top half of the tail fin gone, a big weight was
suddenly dropped off the airframe's back end. Its center of
gravity pitched violently forward, and the bird began to
spin. After a decade of flying, both Durant's and Frank's
reactions were instinctive. To make the airframe swing left
meant pushing gently on the left foot pedal. Durant now
noticed he had already jammed his left pedal all the way to
the floor and his craft was still spinning rapidly to the right
-with no tail rotor there was no way to stop it. The spin was
faster than Durant ever imagined it could be. Details of
earth and sky blurred like patterns on a spinning top. Out
the windshield he saw just blue sky and brown earth.

Durant tried to do something with the flight controls.
Frank, in the seat next to him, had the presence of mind to
do exactly the right thing. The power control levers for the
engines were on the ceiling of the cockpit. Frank had to
fight the spin's strong centrifugal force to raise his arms. In
those frantic seconds he somehow managed to pull one
lever back, shutting off one engine, and to pull the other
one halfway back. Durant shouted into his radio.

- Going in hard! Going down! Raaaay!

The plummeting helicopter's spin rate suddenly slowed.
Just before impact its nose pulled up. Whether for some

aerodynamic reason or something Durant or Frank did
inside the cockpit, the falling chopper leveled off. With the
spin rate down to half what it had been, and with the craft
fairly level, the Black Hawk made a hard, but flat landing.

Flat was critical. It meant there was a chance the men in
the helicopter were still alive.

16

Yousuf Dahir Mo'alim was near the man who fired the
grenade. Mo'alim was behind a tree in an alley that went
behind the Bar Bakin Hotel, a smaller white stone building
that was one block south of the Olympic Hotel. He ducked
behind the tree to hide from the Black Hawk overhead. As
he did one of his men, part of a group of twenty-six militia
who had come running from the neighboring village of
Hawlwadigli, dropped to one knee in the middle of the
alley and pointed up his Russian antitank weapon. The tube
had been fitted with a metal funnel, which was welded on
the back end at an angle to direct the back blast away from
the shooter's body.

'If you miss, I've got another round!' Mo'alim shouted.

They were veteran fighters, guns for hire, mostly,
although everybody was now fighting the Americans for
free. Mo’alim’s father had died in 1984 in fighting between
Somalia and Ethiopia, and at age fifteen the son was
recruited to take his place. He was a skeletal young man,
lost in oversized shirt and pants, with deep hollow cheeks
and a goatee that filled out his narrow chin. He had fought
for two years as one of Siad Barre's soldiers, but as the tide
of that insurrection changed, he had slipped away from his
unit to join Aidid's rebel troops. He was a veteran of many
street fights, but none as fierce as this.

He had organized the men in his village, a labyrinth of
twisting cactus-lined dirt paths around rag huts and tin-
roofed shanties just south of the Bakara Market area, into
an irregular militia for hire. They remained primarily allied
to Aidid, because they belonged, as he did, to the Habr

Gidr clan. Mainly they defended their village from other
marauding bands of young fighters. They provided security
for anybody willing to pay, including, at times, the UN and
other international organizations. Occasionally they went
looking for loot themselves. Men like Mo’alim and his crew
were called mooryan, or bandits. They lived by the gun,
mostly M-16s and the Russian AK-47s that could be
bought at the market for a million Somali shillings, or
about two hundred dollars. They also carried antitank
weapons, everything from World War 11-era bazookas to
the more reliable and accurate Russian-made RPGs.

They took payment for their services in rice or khat.
The drug took its toll. Another word for the mooryan was
dai-dai, or 'quick-quick,' for their jumpy ways and nervous
tics. They were fearless fighters, and they often died young.
But these days all the mooryan in southern Mogadishu had
a common enemy. Some had begun calling themselves, in a
play on the word 'Rangers', Revengers.

They knew the best way to hurt the Americans was to
shoot down a helicopter. The helicopters were a symbol of
UN power and Somali helplessness. When the Rangers
arrived they had seemed invincible. The Black Hawks and
Little Birds were all but invulnerable to the small arms that
made up most of the Somali arsenal. They were designed to
punish with impunity from a distance. The Rangers, when
they came, descended from helicopters quickly, grabbed
their captives, and were gone before a significant force
could be formed to fight them. When they traveled on the
ground, it was in armed convoys that moved fast. But every
enemy advertises his weakness in the way he fights. To
Aidid's fighters, the Rangers' weakness was apparent. They
were not willing to die.

Somalis were famous for braving enemy fire, for almost
suicidal, frontal assaults. They were brought up in clans
and named for their fathers and grandfathers. They entered
a fight with cunning and courage and gave themselves over
to the savage emotion of it. Retreat, even before
overwhelming enemy fire, was considered unmanly. For
the clan, they were always ready to die.

To kill Rangers, you had to make them stand and fight.
The answer was to bring down a helicopter. Part of the
Americans' false superiority, their unwillingness to die,
meant they would do anything to protect each other, things
that were courageous but also sometimes foolhardy. Aidid
and his lieutenants knew that if they could bring down a
chopper, the Rangers would move to protect its crew. They
would establish a perimeter and wait for help. They would
probably not be overrun, but they could be made to bleed
and die.

Aidid's men received some expert guidance in shooting
down helicopters from fundamentalist Islamic soldiers,
smuggled in from Sudan, who had experience fighting
Russian helicopters in Afghanistan. In the effort they had
resolved to focus their entire arsenal of RPGs, the most
powerful weaponry left Aidid after the summer's air attacks
on his tanks and big guns. This was problematic. The
grenades burst on impact, but it was hard to hit a moving
target with one, so the detonators on many were replaced
with timing devices to make them explode in midair. That
way they wouldn't need a direct hit to cripple a chopper.
Their fundamentalist advisers taught them that the
helicopter's tail rotor was its most vulnerable spot. So they
learned to wait until it passed over, and to shoot up at it
from behind. It was awkward and dangerous to point the
rubes at the sky, and suicidal to aim from rooftops. The
helicopters spotted an armed man on a rooftop quickly,
usually before he had a chance to aim his weapon and fire.
So Aidid's fighters devised methods to safely shoot up from
the ground. They dug deep holes in the dirt streets. The
shooter would lie supine with the back of the tube pointed
down into the hole. Sometimes he would cut down a small
tree and lean it into the hole, then cover himself with a
green robe so he could lie under the tree waiting for one to
fly over.

They hit their first Black Hawk in the dark early
morning of September 25, but it wasn't part of a Ranger
mission. The success heartened them. The next time the
Rangers came out in force, they would be ready. They

would only have to hit one.

When Mo'alim heard the helicopters come in low on
October 3 he grabbed his M-16 and rounded up his gang.
They ran north, fanning out into groups of seven or eight
up past National Street and around behind the Olympic
Hotel, moving through neighborhoods they knew well. The
sky was infested with helicopters. Mo'alim's smaller groups
tried to stay together in the crowds of people moving that
way. Surrounded by unarmed civilians, they knew the
Americans would be less likely to shoot at them even if
they were spotted. They wore sheets and towels thrown
over their shoulders to cover their weapons and carried
their automatic rifles stiffly at their sides. They were one of
many militia gangs moving quickly to the fight.

Mo’alim's group first encountered Rangers at an
intersection in a Humvee just south of the hotel on
Hawlwadig Road. As they crept up and fired on the
Americans, a helicopter appeared and opened fire, killing
the eldest of Mo'alim's squad, a portly middle-aged man
they called 'Alcohol.' Mo'alim dragged Alcohol's limp body
off the street, and his squad regrouped a block further
south, behind the Bar Bakin Hotel.

It was there that they watched the first helicopter go
down. The men cheered wildly. They continued moving
and shooting, staying about two blocks away from the
Rangers. They were still south of the target building when
one of Mo'alim's group knelt in the road, took aim at
another Black Hawk, and fired. The grenade hit the rear
rotor and big chunks of it flew off in the explosion. And
then, for a few instants, nothing happened.

It seemed to Mo'alim that the helicopter crashed very
slowly. It flew on for a while like it had not been damaged,
and then abruptly tilted forward and started to spin. It fell
in Wadigley, a crowded neighborhood just south of his
own. The crash brought cries of exaltation from the crowd.
All around him Mo'alim saw people reverse direction.
Moments before, the crowd and the fighters had been
moving north, toward the Olympic Hotel and to where the
first Black Hawk had crashed. Now everyone around him

was racing south. He ran with them, back through his own
neighborhood of Hawlwadigli, a goateed veteran soldier
waving his weapon and shouting: 'Turn back! Stop! There
are still men inside who can shoot!'

Some listened to him and fell in behind Mo’alim and his
men. Others ran on ahead. Ali Hussein, who managed a
pharmacy near where the helicopter crashed, saw many of
his neighbors grab guns and run toward it. He caught hold
of the arm of his friend Ali Mohamed Cawale, who owned
the Black Sea restaurant. Cawale had a rifle. Hussein
grabbed him by both shoulders.

'It's dangerous. Don't go!' he shouted at him.

But the smell of blood was in the air. Cawale wrestled
away from Hussein and joined the running crowd.

17

In ordinary circumstances, as close to the first crash as
they were, the convoy would have just barreled over to it,
running over and shooting through anything in its path. But
with all the help overhead, Task Force Ranger was about to
demonstrate how too much information can hurt soldiers on
a battlefield.

High in the C2 Black Hawk, Harrell and Matthews
could see one group of about fifteen gunmen racing along
streets that paralleled the eight-vehicle convoy. The
running Somalis could keep pace with the vehicles because
the trucks and Humvees stacked up at every intersection.
Each driver waited until the vehicle in front completely
cleared the cross fire before sprinting through it himself. To
get stuck in the open was suicidal. Every time the convoy
stalled, it gave the bands of shooters time to reach the next
street and set up an ambush for each vehicle as it gunned
through. The convoy was getting riddled. From above,
Harrell and Matthews could see roadblocks and places
where Somalis had massed to ambush. So they steered the
convoy away from those places.

There was an added complication. Flying about a

thousand feet over the C2 helicopter was the navy Orion
spy plane, which had surveillance cameras that gave them a
clear picture of the convoy's predicament. But the Orion
pilots were handicapped. They were not allowed to
communicate directly with the convoy. Their directions
were relayed to the commander at the JOC, who would
then radio Harrell in the command bird. Only then was the
plane's advice relayed down to the convoy. This built in a
maddening delay. The Orion pilots would see a direct line
to the crash site. They'd say, 'Turn left!' But by the time
that instruction reached McKnight in the lead Humvee, he
had passed the turn. Heeding the belated direction, they'd
then turn down the wrong street. High above the fight,
commanders watching out their windows or on screens
couldn't hear the gunfire and screaming of wounded men,
or feel the impact of the explosions. From above, the
convoy's progress seemed orderly. The visual image didn't
always convey how desperate the situation really was.

Eversmann, still lying helplessly on his back toward the
rear of the column, had felt the vehicle turn right after
leaving his blocking position, which he expected. He knew
the crash site was just a few blocks that way. But when the
Humvee made the second right-hand turn, it surprised him.
Why were they headed south? It was easy to get lost in
Mog. The streets weren't laid out like some urban planner's
neat grid. Roads you thought were taking you one place
would suddenly slant off in a different direction. There
were more turns. Soon, the crash site that had been close
enough for Eversmann to see from his spot on Hawlwadig
Road was lost somewhere back in the hornets' nest.

The convoy was bearing south when Durant's helicopter
crashed. Up in the lead Humvee, McKnight got the word
on the radio from Lieutenant Colonel Harrell.

- Danny, we just had another Hawk go down to RPG
fire south of the Olympic Hotel. We need you to get
everybody in that first crash site. Need QRF to give us
some help, over.

- This is Uniform. Understand. Aircraft down south of
Olympic Hotel. Recon and see what we can do after that.

- We are going to try to get the QRF to give us some
help. Try to get everyone off that crash site [Super Six
One ] and let's get out of here down to the other Hawk and
secure it, over.

It wasn't going to be easy. McKnight was supposed to
take this convoy, with the prisoners and the wounded,
move to the first crash site, and link up with the bulk of the
force there. There was not enough room on the packed
Humvees and trucks for the men he already had. Yet the
immediate plan called for the convoy to load everyone and
proceed south to the second crash site, covering the same
treacherous ground they were rolling through now. They
pushed on.

Heavy fire and mounting casualties took their toll on
the men in the vehicles. Some of the slightly wounded men
in Eversmann's vehicle seemed to be in varying degrees of
paralysis, as if their role in the mission had ended. Others
were moaning and crying with pain. They were still a long
way from the base.

The state of things infuriated Sergeant Matt Rierson,
leader of the Delta team that had taken the prisoners.
Rierson’s team was with the prisoners on the second truck.
Rierson didn't know where the convoy was going. It was
standard operating procedure for every vehicle in a convoy
to know its destination. That way, if the lead vehicle got
hit, or took a wrong turn, the whole convoy could continue.
But McKnight, a lieutenant colonel more used to
commanding a battalion than a line of vehicles, hadn't told
anyone! Rierson watched as inexperienced Ranger Humvee
drivers would stop after crossing an intersection, trapping
the vehicles behind them in the cross fire. Whenever the
convoy stopped, Rierson would hop down and move from
vehicle to vehicle, trying to square things away.

As they passed back behind the target house, an RPG
scored a direct hit on the third Humvee in the column, the
one McLaughlin had squeezed into. Private Carlson, who
had moved over to make room for the sergeant, heard the
pop of a grenade being launched nearby. Then came a
blinding flash and ear-shattering BOOM! The inside of the

Humvee filled with black smoke. The goggles Carlson had
pinned to the top of his helmet were blown off.

The grenade had cut straight through the steel skin of
the vehicle in front of the gas cap and gone off inside,
blowing the three men in back right out to the street. It tore
the hand guards off McLaughlin's weapon and pierced his
left forearm with a chunk of shrapnel. He felt no pain, just
some numbness in his hand. He told himself to wait until
the smoke cleared to check it out. The shrapnel had
fractured a bone in his forearm, severed a tendon, and
broken a bone in his hand. It wasn't bleeding much and he
could still shoot.

Holding his breath in the dark cloud, his ears ringing,
Carlson felt himself for wet spots. His left arm was bloody.
Shrapnel had pierced it in several places. His boots were on
fire. A drum of .50 cal ammo had been hit, and he heard
people screaming for him to kick it out, kick it out! which
he did, then stooped to pat out the flames on his feet.

Two of the three men blown out the back were severely
injured. One, Delta Master Sergeant Tim 'Griz' Martin, had
absorbed the brunt of the blast. The grenade had poked a
football-sized hole right through the skin of the Humvee,
blew on through the sandbags, through Martin, and
penetrated the ammo can. It had blown off the lower half of
Martin's body. The explosion also tore off the back end of
one of Private Adalberto Rodriguez's thighs. Rodriguez had
tumbled about ten yards before coming to rest. His legs
were a mass of blood and gore. He began struggling to his
feet, only to see one of the five-ton trucks bearing straight
for him. Its driver. Private Maddox, momentarily
disoriented by another grenade blast, rolled the truck right
over him.

The convoy stopped and soldiers scrambled to pick up
the wounded. Medics did what they could for Rodriguez
and Martin, who both looked mortally wounded. The
wounded were lifted back into the vehicles, while Rangers
spilled out to cover the surrounding streets and alleys. At
one, Specialist Aaron Hand and Sergeant Casey Joyce
became engaged in a furious firefight. They were

positioned at opposite sides of an alley. From just outside
his truck, Raiding watched rounds shatter the wall over
Hand's head.

Hand was shooting down the alley, too preoccupied to
notice that shots were now coming at him from a different
angle. Spalding screamed for Hand to get back to the
vehicles, but there was too much noise for him to be heard.
From where Spalding stood, it looked like Hand was going
to be shot for sure. He was doing everything wrong. He
was fighting bravely, but he had not sought cover and he
was changing magazines with his back exposed. Spalding
knew he should go help cover him and pull him back, but
that meant crossing the alley where all the lead was flying.
He hesitated. Hell no, I'm not going to cross that alley. As
he debated with himself, SEAL John Gay ran out to help.
Gay was still limping from where his knife had deflected
an AK-47 round at his hip. He put several rounds up the
alley and herded Hand back to the convoy.

Across the alley, Joyce was on one knee facing north,
doing things right. He had found cover and was returning
disciplined fire, just the way he'd been taught, when a gun
barrel poked from a window above and behind him and let
off a quick burst. Carlson saw it happen. There wasn't even
time to shout a warning, even if Joyce had been able to
hear him. There was just a blaaaap! and a spurt of fire
from the barrel and the sergeant went straight down in the
dirt on his face.

One of the .50 cals promptly blasted gaping holes in the
wall around the window where the gun had appeared, and
Sergeant Jim Telscher, ignoring the heavy fire, sprinted out
to Joyce, grabbed him by the shirt and vest, and, without
even slowing down, dragged him back to the column.

Joyce's skin was already gray and his eyes were open
wide and rolled back so you could only see the whites. He
had been hit in the upper back where the Rangers' new
Kevlar flak vests had no protective plate. The round had
pierced his heart and passed through his torso, exiting and
lodging in the vest's frontispiece, which did have an
armored plate. They loaded him in on the back of Gay's

Humvee, where a Delta medic went to work on him
frantically, holding an IV bag up high with one hand,
despairing, 'We've got to get him back in a hurry! We've
got to get him back in a hurry or he's gonna die!'

The convoy lurched forward again, turning left (bearing
east) and then left again, so they were now heading back
toward the north. They were moving up a road one block
west of the crash site. To get there, all they had to do was
drive two blocks north and turn right. But the gunfire was
relentless. Up in the lead Humvee, Lieutenant Colonel
McKnight was hit. Shrapnel cut into his right arm and the
left side of his neck.

At the rear of the convoy, Sergeant Lorenzo Ruiz, the
tough little boxer from El Paso who had taken over Private
Clay Othic's .50-caliber machine gun after Othic had been
hit in the arm, slumped and slid down limp into the laps of
the men inside the Humvee.

'He got shot! He got shot!' shouted the driver, who
raced the Humvee frantically up the column with the .50
cal just spinning in the empty turret.

'Get the fifty up!' screamed one of the sergeants. 'Get
the fifty up ASAP!'

Packed in the way they were, with Ruiz now slumped in
on top of them, no one could climb into the turret from
inside, so Specialist Dave Ritchie got out and jumped up on
the turret from the outside. He couldn't lower himself into it
because Ruiz's limp body was blocking it, so he leaned in
from the outside as they began moving again, swiveling
and shooting the big gun, hanging on to avoid being thrown
to the street.

Inside, they pulled Ruiz down to let Ritchie get behind
the gun. Staff Sergeant John Burns tore off the wounded
man's vest and shirt.

'I'm hit! I'm hit!' Ruiz gasped and then began to cough
up blood.

Burns found an entrance wound under Ruiz's right arm,
but couldn't locate an exit wound. They propped him
against a radio and a Delta medic went to work. Ruiz was
in shock. Like many of the men in the vehicles, he had

taken the ceramic plate out of his flak vest.

Up in a Humvee turret behind a Mark- 19, a machine
gun-like grenade launcher, Corporal Jim Cavaco was
pumping one 40 mm round after another into the windows
of a building from which they were taking fire. Cavaco was
dropping grenades neatly into the second-story windows
one after another - Bang!... Bang!... Bang!... Bang!

From his seat in the second truck, Spalding shouted,
'Yeah! Get 'em, Vaco!' and then saw his friend slump
forward. Cavaco had been hit by a round in the back of his
head and killed instantly. The convoy stopped again, and
Spalding leapt out to help pull Cavaco out of the turret.
They carried him to the back of Spalding's truck and swung
his body in. It landed on the legs of an injured Ranger who
shrieked with pain.

The volume of fire was terrifying. Yet Somalis seemed
to be darting across streets everywhere. Up in the lead
Humvee, Schilling watched the runners with bewilderment.
Why would anybody be running around on the streets with
all this lead flying? He found that by rolling grenades down
the alley it kept the shooters from sticking their weapons
out. He tried to conserve ammo by shooting only at the
Somalis who were closest. When he ran out of ammo, a
wounded Ranger in back fed Schilling magazines from his
own pouches.

18

Over the radio came a hopeful inquiry from the
command helicopter, which didn't seem to understand how
desperate the convoy's plight had become. - Uniform Six
Four, you got everybody out of the crash site, over?

- We have no positive contact with them yet, McKnight
answered. We took a lot of rounds as we were clearing out
of the area. Quite a few wounded, including me, over.

- Roger, want you to try to go to the first crash site and
consolidate on that. Once we get everybody out of there
we 'll go to the second crash site and try to do an exfil, over.

This was, of course, out of the question, but McKnight
wasn't giving up.

- Roger, understand. Can you give me some ... we just
need a direction and distance from where I'm at, over.

There was no answer at first. The radio net was filled
with calls related to Durant's crash. When he did hear from
his commanders again, McKnight was asked to report the
number of Rangers he had picked up from Eversmann's
Chalk Four. He ignored that request.

- Romeo Six Four [Harrell], this is Uniform Six Four.
From the crash site, where am I now? How far over?

- Standby. Have good visual on you now .. . Danny, are
you still on that main hardball [paved road] ?

- I'm on the exfil road. Down toward National. Harrell
apparently misunderstood. He gave McKnight directions as
if he were still on Hawlwadig Road, out in front of the
target house.

- Turn east. Go about three blocks east and two blocks
north. They're popping smoke, over.

- Understand. From my location I have to go east
further about three blocks and then head north, over.

- Roger, that's from the hardball road the Olympic
Hotel is on, over.

But McKnight was already three blocks east of that
road.

- I'm at the hardball road east of the Olympic Hotel. Do
I just need to turn around on it and head north?

- Negative. They are about three blocks east, one block
north of building one [the target building], over.

19

In the convoy's second-to-last Humvee, where Ruiz was
fighting for his life. Sergeant Burns couldn't get through to
McKnight on the radio so he took off on foot. He feared if
they didn't get Ruiz back to base immediately the young
Texan was going to die. Burns noticed that the gunfire that
had hurt his ears initially now sounded muffled, distant.

His ears had adjusted to it. As he neared the front of the
line he saw Joyce stretched out bloody and pale, with a
medic working over him furiously on the back of a
crowded Humvee. He was about to reach the front when a
D-boy grabbed him.

'You've been hit,' the Delta operator said.

'No I haven't.'

Burns hadn't felt a thing. The D-boy slid his hand inside
Burns's vest at his right shoulder and the sergeant felt a
vicious stab of pain.

'Having trouble breathing?' the D-boy asked.

'No.'

'Any tightness in your chest?'

'I feel all right,’ Bums said. 'I didn't even know I was
hit.'

'You keep an eye on it,' the D-boy said.

Burns made it up to McKnight, who was also bloody,
and busy on the radio. So Burns told Sergeant Bob
Gallagher about Ruiz. Burns thought they should allow a
Humvee or two to speed right back to the base with Ruiz,
as they had done earlier with Blackburn. But Gallagher
knew the convoy could not afford to lose any more vehicles
and firepower now. They still had roughly a hundred men
waiting for them around the first crash site, then there was
the second crash site... Gallagher was already kicking
himself for sending those three vehicles back with
Blackburn. While he knew this might be a death sentence
for Ruiz, he told Burns there was no way anybody was
leaving.

'We have to move to the crash site and consolidate
forces,' he said.

Disgusted, Burns began to make his way back down the
column to his vehicle. He had only gone a few steps when
the convoy started rolling again. He jumped on the back of
a Humvee. It was already jammed. The rear of the vehicle
was slick and sticky with blood. Moaning rose from the
pile of Rangers. Beside him, Joyce looked dead, even
though a medic was still working on him. Sergeant
Galentine was screaming, 'My thumb's shot off! My

thumb's shot off!' Burns did not want to be on that
Humvee.

They were still pointed north. Some of the men were at
the breaking point. In the same Humvee with Burns,
Private Jason Moore saw some of his Ranger buddies just
burying their heads behind the sandbags. Some of the unit's
most boisterous chest-beaters were among them. A burly
kid from Princeton, New Jersey, Moore had a dip of snuff
stuffed under his lower lip and brown spittle on his
unshaved chin. He was sweating and terrified. One RPG
had passed over the vehicle and exploded with an ear-
smarting crack against a wall alongside. Bullets were
snapping around him. He fought the urge to lie down.
Either way I'm going to get shot.

Moore figured if he stayed up and kept on shooting, at
least he'd get shot trying to save himself and the guys. It
was a defining moment for him, a point of clarity in the
midst of chaos. He would go down fighting. He would not
consider lying down again.

Not long after he saw Joyce shot, which really shook
him up. Private Carlson felt a sudden blow and sharp pain
in his right knee. It felt like someone had taken a knife and
held it to his knee and then driven it in with a
sledgehammer. He glanced down to see blood rapidly
staining his pants. He said a prayer and kept shooting. He
had been wildly scared for longer than he had ever felt that
way in his life, and now he thought he might literally die of
fright. His heart banged in his chest and he found it hard to
breathe. His head was filled with the sounds of shooting
and explosions and visions of his friends, one by one, going
down, and blood splashed everywhere oily and sticky with
its dank, coppery smell and he figured, This is it for me.
And then, in that moment of maximum terror, he felt it all
abruptly, inexplicably fall away. One second he was
paralyzed with fear and pain and the next... he had stopped
caring about himself.

He would think about this a lot later, and the best he
could explain it was, his own life no longer mattered. All
that did matter were his buddies, his brothers, that they not

get hurt, that they not get killed. These men around him,
some of whom he had only known for months, were more
important to him than life itself. It was like when Telscher
ran out on the road to pull Joyce back in. Carlson
understood that now, and it was heroic, but it also wasn 't
heroic. At a certain level he knew Telscher had made no
choice, just as he was not choosing to be unafraid. It had
just happened to him, like he had passed through some
barrier. He had to keep fighting, because the other guys
needed him.

In the second of the three Humvees behind the trucks,
Private Ed Kallman sat behind the wheel amazed and
alarmed by what he was seeing. He saw a line of trees on
the sidewalk up ahead begin to explode, one after the other,
as if someone had placed charges in each and was
detonating them at about five-second intervals. Either that
or somebody with a big gun was systematically taking out
the trees, each about two stories high, thinking that they
might be hiding snipers. He found it strange, anyway, the
blasts walking their way toward him splintering the trees
one by one.

Kallman, who had felt such a rush of excitement an
hour earlier as he encountered battle for the first time, now
felt nothing but nauseating dread. So far neither he nor
anyone in his vehicle had been hit, but it seemed like just a
matter of time. He watched with horror as the convoy
disintegrated before him. He was a soldier for the most
powerful nation on earth. If they were having this much
trouble, shouldn't somebody have stepped in? Where was a
stronger show of force? Somehow it didn't seem right that
they could be reduced to this, battling on these narrow dirt
streets, bleeding, dying! This wasn't supposed to happen.
He saw men he knew and liked and respected bellowing in
pain on the street with gunshot wounds that exposed great
crimson flaps of glistening muscle, men wandering in the
smoke bleeding, dazed and seemingly unconscious, their
clothing torn off. American soldiers. Those who were not
injured were covered with the blood of others. Kallman
was young and new to the unit. If these more -veteran

soldiers were all getting hit, sooner or later he was going to
get hit. Oddly, the surprise he felt overshadowed the fear.
He kept telling himself. This is not supposed to happen!

And Kallman's turn did come. As he slowed down
before another intersection he looked out the open window
to his left and saw a smoke trail coming straight at him. It
all happened in a second. He knew it was an RPG and he
knew it was going to hit him. Then it did. He awoke lying
on his right side on the front seat with his ears ringing. He
opened his eyes and was looking directly at the radio
mounted under the dash. He sat up and floored the
accelerator. Up ahead he saw the convoy making a left turn
and he raced to catch them.

Later, when he'd had a chance to inspect his Humvee,
he saw that the RPG had hit his door, deeply denting it and
poking a hole through the steel. He and the others inside
had evidently been spared by the bulletproof glass panel
behind the door - Kalman had the window rolled down.
The brunt of the grenade's force had been absorbed by the
Humvee's outer shell, and the glass barrier had been thick
enough to stop it. Kallman's left arm began to swell and
discolor, but otherwise he was fine.

Dan Schilling felt better whenever they were moving.
But the convoy seemed to inch along, stopping, starting,
stopping, starting. Whenever they stopped the volume of
fire would surge, so many rounds that at times it looked
like the stone walls on both sides of the alley were being
sandblasted. There were plenty of targets to shoot at. Up in
the turret, Pringle unloosed the .50 cal on a group of armed
Somalis. Schilling watched as one of them, a tall, skinny
man wearing a bright yellow shirt and carrying an AK-47,
came apart as the big rounds tore through him. Deep red
blotches ippeared on the yellow shirt. First an arm came
off. Then the man's head and chest exploded. The rest of
the Somalis scattered, moving around the next corner,
where Schilling knew they'd again be waiting for them to
cross.

As the Humvee came abreast of the alley Schilling
didn't bother to use his sights, the men were that close. The

first man he shot was just ten yards away. He was crouched
down and had a painful grimace on his face. Maybe Pringle
had hit him earlier. Schilling put two rounds in his chest.
He shot the man next to him twice in the chest and as he
did he felt a slam and a dull pain in his right foot. When
they were through the intersection. Schilling inspected his
boot. The door had taken two bullets. One had passed
through the outer steel and been stopped by the bullet-proof
glass window inside it. The second had hit lower, and had
passed right through the door. The door, which was
guaranteed to stop the AK-47's 7.62 mm round, had not
stopped either bullet. The glass got the first, and the second
had been slowed enough so that it hit with enough force to
hurt, but not enough to penetrate the boot.

Pringle had just put doors on the vehicle earlier that
day. They'd done the previous six missions without them,
and these had just arrived in a shipment from the States.
Schilling had mixed feelings about them. He liked the
protection, but the doors made it a lot harder to move.
When he had checked them out that morning, he couldn't
get his window to roll down, so he'd started to remove the
door. Pringle stopped him.

'Hey, I just put those on!' he shouted.

Schilling had showed him how the window stuck, and
Pringle had fetched a hammer and simply whacked the
frame until the window dropped down. Now, Schilling was
glad they'd kept the door, but some of the sense of
invulnerability he'd felt was gone. Both bullets had gone
completely through.

They continued north for about nine blocks, all the way
up to Armed Forces Road, one of the main paved roads in
Mogadishu. They'd gone past the crash site, only a block
west of it, without stopping. The helicopters had directed
them to turn right, but the alleyways looked too narrow to
Schilling and the others in the lead Humvee. If the trucks
got stuck they'd probably all be killed. So they continued
on. Some of the men in the convoy saw the downed Black
Hawk just a block over as they went past, but no one had
told them that it was their objective. Many of the men in

the vehicles still thought they were heading back to base.
As they approached Armed Forces Street, they stopped
again.

Schilling fought back feelings of futility. McKnight
seemed dazed and overwhelmed. He was bleeding from the
arm and the neck, and not his usual decisive self. Schilling
muttered to himself, 'We're going to keep driving around
until we're all fucking dead.'

He then decided to do something himself, since
McKnight seemed stymied. Using a frequency he knew
helicopter pilots used to talk among themselves, he
bypassed the C2 Black Hawk and contacted the observation
helicopters flying orbits higher up. Coordinating
communications between the air and ground was
Schilling's specialty. He asked them to vector him to the
crash site. The choppers were eager to oblige. They told
him to steer the convoy west on Armed Forces Road, and
then hang another left. McKnight gave permission for
Schilling to direct them, and the convoy was moving once
again.

They made the left turn off Armed Forces and drove
through the storm of gunfire for about seven blocks before
Schilling saw up ahead the smoldering remains of the five-
ton they had torched in front of the target building. They'd
come full circle. Schilling hadn't told the observation bird
pilots which crash site he wanted. The pilots could see how
desperate things were around Durant's crash, where Somali
mobs had begun to encircle the unprotected downed Black
Hawk, and had taken it upon themselves to direct the
convoy there. Schilling hadn't realized it until he saw the
target house and the Olympic Hotel again.

'We're headed for the second crash site,' he told
McKnight.

The lieutenant colonel knew only what his orders were.
He reiterated that they were to proceed to the first crash
site.

On the command net, their wanderings had turned to
black comedy. Matters were now complicated by the fact
that a second vehicle convoy had been dispatched from the

base to attempt a rescue at Durant's crash site.

- Danny, 1 think you've gone too far west trying to look
at the second crash. You seem to have gone about four
blocks west and five blocks south, over.

- Romeo Six Four [Harrell], this is Uniform Six Four
[McKnight]. Give me a right turn, right turn! Right turn!

- Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four... You need
to go about four blocks south, turn east. There is green
smoke marking the site south. Keep coming south.

A voice came over the busy command frequency
pleading for order.

- Stop giving directions! ... I think you're talking to the
wrong convoy!

- This is Uniform Six Four, you've got me back in front
of the Olympic Hotel.

- Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four. You need to
turn east.

So the convoy now made a U-turn. They had just driven
through a vicious ambush in front of the target house and
were now turning around to drive right back through it.
Men in the vehicles behind could not understand. It was
insane! They seemed to be trying to get killed.

Things had deteriorated so badly that up in the C2 bird
Harrell was considering just releasing the prisoners, their
prize, the supposed point of this mission and of all this
carnage. He instructed the Delta units on foot now closing
in on the first crash site:

- As soon as we get you linked up with the Uniform
element throw all the precious cargo. We're going to try
and get force down to the second crash site.

The voices from various helicopters now trying to steer
poor M:Knight recorded the frustration of his fruitless
twists and turns.

- Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four. Next right.
Next right! Alleyway! Alleyway!

- They just missed their turn.

- Take the next available right. Uniform.

- Be advised they are coming under heavy fire.

- Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four.

- God damn it, stop! God damn it, stop!

- Right turn! Right turn! You're taking fire! Hurry up!

In this terrible confusion the men on the convoy saw

strange things. They passed an old woman carrying two
plastic grocery bags, walking along calmly through the
barrage. As the convoy approached, she set both bags down
gently, stuck fingers in her ears, and kept on walking.
Minutes later, heading in the opposite direction, they saw
the same woman. Sie had the bags again. She set them
down, stuck fingers in her ears, and walked away as she
had before.

At every intersection now Somalis just lined up, on
both sides of the street, and fired at every vehicle that came
across. Since they had men on both sides of the street, any
rounds that missed the vehicle as it flashed past would
certainly have hit the men on the other side of the road.
Sergeant Eversmann, who had found some better cover for
himself in the back end of his Humvee, watched with
amazement. What a strategy! He felt these people must
have no regard for even their own lives! They just did not
care!

The city was shredding them block by block. No place
was safe. The air was alive with hurtling chunks of hot
metal. They heard the awful slap of bullets into flesh and
heard the screams and saw the insides of men’s bodies spill
out and watched the gray blank pallor rise in the faces of
their friends, and the best of the men fought back despair.
They were America's elite fighters and they were going to
die here, outnumbered by this determined rabble. Their
future was setting with this sun on this day and in this
place.

Schilling felt disbelief, and now some guilt. He had
steered the convoy the wrong way for at least part of this
calamity. Stunned by the confusion, he struggled to
convince himself this was all really happening. Over and
over he muttered, 'We're going to keep driving around until
we're all fucking dead.'

20

Specialist Spalding was still behind the passenger door
in the first truck with his rifle out the window, turned in the
seat so he could line up his shots, when he was startled by a
flash of light down by his legs. It looked like a laser beam
shot through the door and up into his right leg. A bullet had
pierced the steel of the door and the window, which was
rolled down, and had poked itself and fragments of glass
and steel straight up his leg from just above his knee all the
way up to his hip. He had been stabbed by the shaft of light
that poked through the door. He squealed.

'What's wrong, you hit?' shouted Maddox.

'Yes!'

And then another laser poked through, this one into his
left leg. Spalding felt a jolt this time but no pain. He
reached down to grab his right thigh and blood spurted out
between his fingers. He was both distressed and amazed.
The way the light had shot through. He still felt no pain. He
didn't want to look at it.

Then Maddox shouted, 'I can't see! I can't see!'

The driver's helmet was askew and his glasses were
knocked around sideways on his head.

'Put your glasses on, you dumb ass,' Spalding said.

But Maddox had been hit in the back of the head. The
round must have hit his helmet, which saved his life, but hit
with such force that it had rendered him temporarily blind.
The truck was rolling out of control and Spalding, with
both legs shot, couldn't move over to grab the wheel.

They couldn't stop in the field of fire, so there was
nothing to do but shout directions to Maddox, who still had
his hands on the wheel.

'Turn left! Turn left! Now! Now!'

'Speed up!'

'Slow down!'

The truck was weaving and banging into the sides of
buildings. It ran over a Somali man on crutches.

'What was that?' asked Maddox.

'Don't worry about it. We just ran over somebody.'

And they laughed. They felt no pity and were beyond
fear. They were both laughing as Maddox stopped the
truck.

One of the Dboys, Sergeant Mike Foreman, jumped
from the back of the truck, ran up, and opened the driver's
side door to a cabin now splattered with blood.

'Holy shit!' he said.

Maddox slid over next to Spalding, who was now
preoccupied with his wounds. There was a perfectly round
hole in his left knee, but there was no exit wound. The
bullet had evidently fragmented on impact with the door
and glass and only the jacket had penetrated his knee. It
had flattened on impact with his kneecap and just slid
around under the skin to the side of the joint. The
remainder of the bullet had peppered his lower leg, which
was bleeding. Spalding propped both legs up on the dash
and pressed a field dressing on one. He lay his rifle on the
rim of the side window, changed the magazine, and, as
Foreman got the truck moving again, resumed firing. He
was shooting at everything that moved.

To make room for more wounded on the back of his
Humvee, wounded Private Clay Othic, who had been shot
in the arm at the beginning of the fight, jumped out the
back and ran to the second truck. One of the men riding
there proffered a hand to help him climb aboard, but with
his broken arm Othic couldn't grab hold of anything. After
several failed attempts he ran around to the cab, and
Specialist Aaron Hand stepped out to let him squeeze in
between himself and the driver. Private Richard
Kowalewski, a skinny quiet kid from Texas whom they all
called 'Alphabet' because they didn't want to pronounce his
name.

Kowalewski was new to the unit, and quiet. He had just
met a girl he wanted to marry, and had been talking about
leaving the regiment when his tour was up in a few months.
His sergeant had been trying to convince him to stay.
Minutes after Othic slid in next to him, Kowalewski was
hit by a bullet in his shoulder, which knocked him back

against the seat. He checked out the wound briefly and
straightened back up behind the wheel.

Alphabet, want me to drive?' asked Othic.

’No, I'm okay.'

Othic was struggling in the confined space to apply a
pressure dressing to the driver's bleeding shoulder when the
RPG hit. It rocketed in from the left, severing
Kowalewski’s left arm and entering his chest. It didn't
explode. The two-foot-long missile embedded itself in
Kowalewski, the fins sticking out his left side under his
missing arm, the point sticking out the right side. He was
unconscious, but still alive. Driverless, the truck crashed
into the back end of the one before it, the one with the
prisoners in back and with Foreman, Maddox, and Spalding
in the cab. The impact threw Spalding against the side door
and then his truck careened into a wall.

Othic had been knocked cold. He awakened to
Specialist Hand shaking him, yelling that he had to get out.

'It's on fire!' Hand shouted.

The cab was black with smoke and Othic could see the
rocket fuse glowing from what looked like inside Alphabet.
The grenade lodged in his chest was un-exploded, but
something had caused a blast. It might have been a
flashbang mounted on Kowalewski's vest or rocket
propellant from the grenade. Hand jumped out his door.
Othic reached over to grab Kowalewski and pull him out,
but the driver's bloody clothes just lifted damply off of his
pierced torso. Othic stumbled out to the street and noticed
his and Hand's helmets had been blown off. Hand's rifle
was shattered. They moved numbly and even a little
giddily. Death had buzzed past close enough to kill
Kowalewski and knock off their helmets but had left them
virtually unscathed. Hand couldn't hear out of his left ear,
but that was it. Both men found their helmets down the
street - they had evidently blown right out the window.

Hand also found the lower portion of Kowalewski’s
arm. Just the left hand and a bit of wrist. He picked it up,
ran back to the Humvee where the Dboys had placed
Kowalewski, and put it in the mortally wounded man's

pants pocket.

Still dazed, Othic crawled into a Humvee. As they set
off again he began groping on the floor with his good left
hand collecting rounds that guys had ejected from their
weapons when they jammed. Othic passed them back to
those still shooting.

Many of the vehicles were running out of ammo. They
had expended thousands of rounds. Three of the twenty-
four Somali prisoners were dead and one was wounded.
The back ends of the remaining trucks and Humvees were
slick with blood. There were chunks of viscera clinging to
floors and inner walls. McKnight's lead Humvee had two
flat tires, both on the right side. The vehicles were meant to
run on flats, but at nowhere near normal speed. The second
Humvee in line was almost totally disabled. It was
dragging an axle and was being pushed by the five-ton
behind it, the one that had been hit by the grenade that
killed Kowalewski. The Humvee driven by the SEALs, the
third in line, had three flat tires and was so pockmarked
with bullet holes it looked like a sponge. SEAL Howard
Wasdin, who had been shot in both legs, had them draped
up over the dash and stretched out on the hood. Some of
the Humvees were smoking. Carlson's had a gaping
grenade hole in the side and four flat tires.

When the RPG hit Kowalewski in the cab of the first
truck, it forced everything behind it to a halt. In the noise
and confusion, no one in McKnight's lead Humvee noticed,
so they proceeded alone up to Armed Forces Road, rolling
now at about twenty miles per hour. The observation
helicopters called for a right turn (the convoy had driven
past the crash site a second time about seven blocks back,
this time one block to the east of it, looking in vain for a
street wide enough to make a left turn). When they reached
Armed Forces Road, Schilling was surprised to find it
deserted. They turned right and had gone only about forty
yards, planning to turn right again and head back down
toward the crash site, when Schilling saw out his right side
window a Somali step out into an alley and level an RPG
tube at them.

’RPG! RPG!' he shouted.

The Humvee's big turret gun was silent. Schilling
turned to see why Pringle wasn't shooting, and saw the
gunner down in back grabbing a fresh can of ammo.
Pringle raised his hands to cover his head.

'GO!' Schilling screamed at the driver. Private Joe
Harosky.

But instead of shooting out of the intersection, Harosky
turned into it, and bore straight down on the man with the
RPG tube. This happened in seconds. The grenade
launched. Schilling saw a puff of smoke and heard the
distinctive pop and the big ball of the grenade coming right
for them. He froze. He didn't even raise his weapon. The
grenade shot straight past the Humvee at door level on his
side. He felt it whoosh past.

'Back up! Back up!' he shouted.

Schilling got off a few rounds, and Pringle was back up
working the .50 cal before they'd cleared the alley. When
Schilling turned around, worried they'd ram the Humvee
behind them, he discovered they were all alone. Harosky
backed out into Armed Forces Road, where they turned
around and headed west. They spotted the rest of the
column where they'd left it, still facing north just shy of the
main road.

McKnight, who had been silent ever since the U-turn
back by the Olympic Hotel, seemed to recover himself at
this point. He got out of the Humvee and conferred with
Sergeant Gallagher outside by the hood of the vehicle.
Gallagher was furious about the confusion. But as he
confronted McKnight, he was hit with a round that knocked
him to the street. He fell right at Schilling's feet. Bright red
blood pumped in spurts from his arm. Schilling had never
seen such scarlet blood. It was obviously arterial. It shot
out in powerful squirts. He pressed his fingers to it and
fished for a field dressing in his medical pouch. He patched
up Gallagher as best he could, shoving in Curlex (a highly
absorbent gauze that is used to help stop bleeding) and
bandaging it tightly. In their weeks in Somalia, the PJs had
given all of the men additional training with field dressings.

They'd practiced with live goats, shooting the animals and
then having the men work on them, getting their hands in
some real gore. The experience helped. Gallagher walked
back to his own vehicle, but Schilling kept his weapon. He
needed the ammo.

They had been wandering now for about forty-five
minutes. McKnight was ready to pack it in. There were
now far more dead and wounded in the convoy than there
were at the first crash site. He called up to Harrell.

- Romeo Six Four, this is Uniform Six Four. We've got a
lot of vehicles that will be almost impossible to move. Quite
a few casualties. Getting to the crash site will be awful
tough. Are pinned down.

Harrell was insistent.

- Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four. Danny, 1
really need to get you back to that crash site. I know you
turned left on Armed Forces [Road], what's your status?

But McKnight and his men had had enough.

- This is Uniform Six Four. I have numerous casualties,
vehicles that are halfway running. Gotta get these
casualties out of here ASAP.

* * *

They weren't home yet.

They began moving, and everyone heartened as word
passed back that they were finally pointed back to the base.
Maybe some of them would make it out alive after all.

They found Via Lenin, a four-lane road with a median
up the center that would lead them back down to the K-4
traffic circle and home. Spalding began to lose feeling in
his fingertips. For the first time in the ordeal he felt panic.
He thought he must be lapsing into shock. He saw a little
Somali boy who looked no more than five years old with
an AK-47, shooting it wildly from the hip, bright flashes
from the muzzle of the gun. Somebody shot the boy and his
legs flew up into the air, as though he had slipped on
marbles, and he landed flat on his back. It happened like a
slow-motion sequence in a movie, or a dream. The D-boy

driving. Foreman, was a helluva shot. He had his weapon
in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. Spalding
saw him gun down three Somalis without even slowing
down. He was impressed.

He felt his hands curling up like someone with cerebral
palsy.

’Hey, man, let's get the hell back,' he said. 'I'm not doin’
too good.’

’You’re doin’ cool,’ said Foreman.

SEAL John Gay’s Humvee was now in the lead. It was
riddled with bullets and smoking and slowing down,
running on three rims. There were eight wounded Rangers
and Joyce's body in back, with Wasdin's bloody legs
splayed out on the hood (he'd been shot once more in the
left foot). Wasdin was yelling, 'Just get me out of here!'
The Sammies had stretched two big underground gasoline
tanks across the roadway with junk and furniture and other
debris and had set it all on fire. Afraid to stop the Humvee
for fear it would not start back up, they crashed over and
through the flaming debris, nearly flipping, but the wide,
sturdy vehicle righted itself and kept on going. The rest of
the column followed.

It was 5.40 p.m. They had been battling through the
streets now for more than an hour. Of the approximately
seventy-five men in the convoy, soldiers and prisoners,
nearly half had been hit by bullets or shrapnel. Eight were
dead, or near death. As they approached K-4 circle, they
braced themselves for another vicious ambush.

OVERRUN

1

Too many things were happening at the same time, all
of them bad. Task Force Ranger was two hours into a
mission that was supposed to have taken an hour. For
General Garrison and his staff in the airfield JOC, watching
and listening on TV screens and radio, and to element
commanders Harrell and Matthews in the C2 Black Hawk,
circling over the fight, there came the awful recognition
that events had slipped out of control.

Their force was now stretched beyond its limits.
Durant's crash site was in imminent danger of being
overrun. Most of the original assaulters - about 160 D-boys
and Rangers - were now either cut to pieces on the limping
ground convoy or strung out on foot between the target
house and the first helicopter crash site. They belonged to
the strongest military power on earth, but until some
additional force could be brought to bear, they were
stranded, fighting for their lives on city streets surrounded
by thousands of furious well-armed Somalis. Forces from a
full company of the 10th Mountain Division, another 150
men, had arrived at the task force's base and thrown itself
into the effort to reach Durant's crash site, but they were
running into the same problems as the other vehicles trying
to move through the deadly ambushes and roadblocks that
had been erected all over the city.

Two more 10th Mountain companies were en route, and
the UN's Pakistani and Malaysian forces had agreed to add
their tanks and armored personnel carriers to the fight, but
the logistics of assembling this polyglot rescue convoy
would be daunting, and would take hours. In two more
hours it would be dark.

The men fighting for their lives out in the city knew
nothing of the bigger picture. They could not see beyond
the increasingly desperate struggle on their corner, and
each still fought with the expectation that rescue was just
minutes away.

Shortly before Durant's helicopter had been shot down,

the one and only airborne rescue team had roped into the
first crash site, the one just blocks away from the target
building. They had flown in on Black Hawk Super Six
Eight. Air Force Technical Sergeant Tim Wilkinson had
been seated between the two crew chiefs in the back of it
when a white chalkboard was passed from man to man.
Written on it in big black letters was '61 DOWN.’ The bad
news produced a big jolt of adrenaline. It meant they were
going in.

They had been practicing together for months, a mix of
soldiers from different unit and branches. Wilkinson was
one of two air force PJs on board. With them was a five-
man team of D-boys and seven Rangers. Ever since the
mission had been drawn up earlier that summer, this team
of fourteen men had been preparing to rope down to a
crashed helicopter, first at Fort Bragg and then in
Mogadishu. Everyone knew there was a chance a
helicopter could be shot down on one of these missions,
although it was considered so unlikely that the CSAR
element had originally been cut from the deployment.
Garrison had put his foot down and it had been reinstated,
but the bird still had been considered something of a luxury
and a nuisance, like the bulky boxes of emergency medical
supplies and equipment Delta surgeon Major Rob Marsh
had insisted on hauling all over the world for the last eight
years. There was always a temptation to avoid taking such
ominous precautions, like the way the Dboys went into
battle with their blood types taped to their shoes. You didn't
want to jinx yourself, but prudence dictated preparing for
the worst. On the first six missions the CSAR team had
flown in circles for an hour or so and then returned.

Wilkinson and the other air force guys practiced
emergency medicine like an extreme sport. Their job was
primarily rescuing downed pilots, and since there was no
telling where or when a plane would crash, from midocean
to mountaintop, from frozen tundra to the middle of a
crowded city, their unit's motto, 'Anytime, anywhere,' was
a point of pride. They were trained to climb cliffs, search
deserts, and to dive out of airplanes at extremely high

altitudes, if necessary, sometimes far behind enemy lines,
to track lost and wounded flyers, patch them up, and bring
them home. Their training was designed to push them
beyond normal human constraints. Men sometimes died
trying to pass the PJ course in the early 1980s when
Wilkinson volunteered. He was twenty-five then, an avid
outdoorsman. He decided to ditch a tamer career as an
electrical engineer for something to make his heart pump
faster. His personal nightmare had been the water drill at
the army Special Forces SCUBA training facility. It was
called 'crossovers.' Trainees were weighted down with
water-filled tanks and dropped in a deep pool. Holding
their breath, they had to walk twenty-five meters to the
other end without coming up for air. For Wilkinson, it was
hard enough just to go that distance without blacking out,
but the instructors would deliberately detain him, push him
backward, disorient him, pull off his mask and fins, rough
him up, tangle him up with other trainees... simulating the
helter-skelter, life-threatening stresses of a real-world
rescue. To panic or black out meant failing the test. Those
who made it across the pool had thirty seconds to catch
their breath before setting out to recross the pool. This was
done over and over again, until many of those who hadn't
failed had decided to quit. And this was just one such
sadistic exercise. Those who made it through tests like
these, and who had years of experience performing difficult
rescues, were gutsy, hardened risk takers. But in the
Special Forces world, the 'blueshirts' were still considered
slightly effete. The Dboys called them 'shake -and-bake'
commandos because the PJ route was considered a shortcut
into the special ops community. In most other instances,
the air force was the least physically demanding of the
branches. Some of the D-boys saw their presence and the
four SEALs as a genuflection to intra-service rivalry. This
was a 'joint' operation. Everybody wanted a chance to play
in this war. There were plenty of guys who rose above such
pettiness, but there was enough of it in the hangar to color
Wilkinson's weeks of deployment. It was something he and
the other air force specialists had learned to live with.

When the chalkboard came around, Wilkinson was
immediately hungry for more information. Where had Six
One gone down? Was it burning? How many people were
on board? For him, apart from the physical danger (in this
case being shot at), rescues were a mental challenge.
People's lives depended on how well he could think on his
feet. He carried two heavy bags, one for medical supplies
and the other containing tools for cutting open the
helicopter and prying men loose. Training had taught him
to cope with stress and how to handle the tools. The rest
was all improvisation.

Specialist Rob Phipps, the ’Phippster,' was the youngest
of the Rangers on board. He was twenty-two. To the more
experienced men, battle was a grim necessity, part of their
jobs. They had weighed the risks and for various reasons
had accepted them. For Phipps, the prospect of going in
was just thrilling. His pulse raced and his senses seemed
twice as alert. The only thing he could compare it to was a
drug. He could hardly sit still. He had been a hellion of a
teenager growing up in Detroit, drinking and partying,
breaking all the rules, running completely out of control.
The Rangers had taken all that fearless exuberance and
pointless bravado and channeled it. That was the secret
core of all the Hoo-ah discipline and esprit. You would be
given permission, in battle, to break the biggest social
taboo of all. You killed people. You were supposed to kill
people, ft wasn't often talked about in just that way, but
there it was. Phipps didn't consider himself bloodthirsty,
but he'd been groomed and primed for a moment just like
this, and he was eager. He had his CAR-15, which could
fire upward of six hundred rounds per minute, and he'd
been trained to hit what he aimed at. Part of him never
believed he'd actually be asked to do it. Now he reminded
himself: This is for real! He was frightened, excited, and
nervous all at once. He had never felt this way.

As pilot Dan Jollata called back, 'One minute,' the men
checked weapons, chambered rounds, and passed along
whatever bits of information were offered by the crew
chiefs and those at the doors, who could see below. They

moved over Wolcott's downed Black Hawk exactly eight
minutes after it crashed. Jollata flew in from the north,
flared, and then hovered about thirty feet over the street.
The Little Bird that had gone in to rescue the two wounded
D-boys had landed right on Marehan Road, but the Black
Hawk was much too big to go all the way down.

From his middle spot, Wilkinson couldn't see anything.
He was taking his cues from Master Sergeant Scott Fales,
his team leader. They made eye contact and nodded. This is
it. Then Jollata said it was time, the ropes were kicked out,
and men started sliding out. When it was his turn,
Wilkinson noticed that the essential kit bags, which were
supposed to be kicked out first, had been left behind. So he
and Fales waited until the men before them had cleared the
rope and then kicked out the bags themselves. They made
one last check around inside the now-empty bird before
they jumped.

The delay was costly. As Jollata held his hover these
few extra seconds, an RPG exploded on the left side of his
airframe. It rocked the Black Hawk like a roundhouse
punch. Jollata instinctively began to pull up and away.

'Coming out. I think we have been hit,' Jollata radioed.
Confirmation was already coming from nearby Little Birds.

- You have been hit.

- Behind your engines.

- Be advised you are smoking.

'We still have people on the ropes!' one of his crew
chiefs shouted.

Jollata could hear his rotor blades whistling. Shrapnel
from the blast had peppered them with holes. The aircraft
sloshed from side to side. The blast had damaged the main
rotor housing and had destroyed the engine cooling system.
Instinct and training both dictated that he move out, fast,
but Jollata eased the Black Hawk back down to a hover for
the remaining seconds Wilkinson and Fales needed to
finish sliding down the ropes.

Stretched out on the rope, Wilkinson heard the
explosion above, but he was so intent on negotiating his
descent through the brown dust cloud that he never felt the

bird jerk forward and up, and didn't learn until much later
how Jollata’s cool had saved his life.

- You had better set it down pretty quick somewhere,
came advice for Jollata from one of the helicopters above.
You have a big hole on top.

’All systems are normal right now, just a little whine in
the rotor system. I think I can make it back to the field,'
said Jollata.

- Be advised you've got smoke coming out of the very
top of the rotor. I suggest you go down to the new port. Put
it down now.

- Let Six Eight make his call, said Matthews from the
C2 Black Hawk. He looks all right.

Once Wilkinson and Fales were on the ground, Super
Six Eight limped low and slow across the city trailing a thin
gray plume. Jollata struggled in the cockpit to fly it. It was
like maneuvering a truck on a sheet of ice. The Black
Hawk could survive without oil for a time, but losing the
cooling system meant the gears would burn. He looked for
an open field near the port.

'I've got the field in sight. All systems normal. I am
losing transmission pressure right now,'

The sturdy Black Hawk kept going. They flew past the
open field and then slipped over the fencing to the airport
base. Jollata still faced the challenge of putting it down. He
knew the chopper couldn't hold a hover, so he warned the
crew chiefs in back to brace themselves for a hard landing.
He radioed for emergency crews on the ground to be ready,
and then just slammed the bird down with a quick roll at
sixty knots. He put it right on the wheels. They hit with a
jolt, but the Black Hawk stayed upright and intact.

2

Wilkinson heard the snap of rounds passing nearby as
soon as he hit the street. It was hot and in the cloud of dust
he couldn't see. He ran to a wall on the right side of the
street and waited for the dust to settle.

He was carrying a small medical pack and his CAR-15,
sidearm, rounds, radio, canteen, and body armor. Instead of
a K-pot (the standard U.S. Army Kevlar helmet),
Wilkinson was wearing the lightweight plastic Pro-Tech
hockey helmet preferred by most of the Dboys. Their
specialized work called for them to move fast in and out of
small places, so their primary concern was bumping their
head, not taking a bullet or shrapnel. Wilkinson preferred
the little helmet because he could glue a strip of Velcro to
the top, where he could fasten a flashlight.

Wilkinson had one of the heavy ceramic plates in the
front of his body armor, and with all the other gear must
have weighed half again his 180 pounds, yet he didn't feel
the extra weight. There had been some learned discussion
in the CSAR bird about the pros and cons of wearing the
armor plates. They were heavy, and in some cases were so
oversized that the top of the breast plate jammed
uncomfortably up under the chin of men seated in the
choppers. Since so much of their time had been spent just
sitting, there was ample sentiment in the bird for leaving
the plates out altogether. The Kevlar itself could stop
shrapnel and a 9 mm round. Wilkinson figured the standard
Somali weapon to be the AK-47, which fires a faster round.
So he endured the plate in front, but not in back. It was a
reminder of the all-important rule: Never turn your back on
the enemy.

Except, at this intersection of dirt roads and stone
houses, the enemy seemed to be shooting from everywhere.
He couldn't see anything. He took his heavy leather fast-
roping gloves off and clipped them on his vest, waiting for
the cloud to thin enough so he could see where he was.

They had put down on Marehan Road, a wide dirt road
immediately east of the crash, though Wilkinson could not
yet see Super Six One. As Mogadishu neighborhoods went,
this one was upscale. This wide north-south street was
intersected by narrow alleys running east-west. He knew
Super Six One was in one of those. There were one- and
two-story houses made of either rose-tinted, white, or gray-
brown stone, roofed with tin, most arrayed around small

inner courtyards. Some of the outer walls were smooth
plaster and had been painted, although all were stained with
the orange sand of the streets. Most of the walls were
uneven. Even the ones made of modern cinder blocks were
so sloppily mortared they resembled a hastily stacked pile
of stones. It was clear that most of the construction, while
in some cases ambitious, was strictly do-it-yourself. There
were small trees inside the courtyards and some out on the
street.

He saw some of his team across the road moving west,
up a narrow alley. The kit bags and fast ropes were still in
the middle of Marehan Road. Alongside was a long shard
of Super Six One's shattered rotors. At impact, pieces of the
rotors had been hurled blocks away. Wilkinson ran across
the road, still hearing the loud snap of bullets around him,
and picked up both bags. As he rounded the corner to the
alley, he saw the wreck. He was startled by its size. They
were used to seeing Black Hawks in the air or out on
spacious tarmacs. In this narrow alley it looked tragic, like
a harpooned whale, beached on its left side. The T-shaped
tail boom was twisted and bent down. On its side like that,
the bird was about eight feet high. There were bits and
pieces of rotor, engine, stone, and mortar scattered all over
the top of it. Painted on the front end of the bird, under the
right cockpit door facing upward, was a crude cartoon of a
crooked-nosed Indian with a head feather, and the words,
'Sitting Bull.' He remembered that 'Bull' Briley was Six
One's copilot.

Much had already happened. The rescue team's D-boys
and Rangers, including the group from Chalk Two who had
run over from the target building, had set up a small
perimeter, basically guarding the alley to the front and rear
of the downed aircraft. The crushed nose of the bird
pointed east. There were a few dead Somalis scattered on
the street. People would rush out, often women or children,
to retrieve their weapons, and others would step out to pull
bodies to cover.

Sergeant Fales was at the front end of the wreckage
stretching up to peer inside when he felt a tug at his left

pants leg. Then came the pain. It felt like a hot poker had
been stabbed through his calf muscle. Fales, a big, broad-
faced man who had fought in Panama and during the Gulf
War, felt anger with the pain. Here he was after years of
training for a moment like this, and after less than three
minutes on the ground he'd been shot. How was he to do
his job, direct this rescue, with a big bloody hole in his leg?

He hopped back from the front of the helicopter with a
disappointed grimace. Wilkinson caught up as Fales
hobbled back toward the tail of the bird. Delta Sergeant
First Class Bob Mabry had him under one arm.

'What's up?' Wilkinson asked.

'I’ve been shot.'

'What?'

'Been shot. Rat bastard shot me.’

Fales and Mabry ducked into the hole the crashing
helicopter had knocked in the south wall of the alley.
Mabry cut open his pants with his scissors and saw that the
bullet had passed through the calf muscle and out the front
of his leg. It had apparently not broken the leg bones. By
the look of it, with flaps of muscle tissue spilled out of the
wound, they figured it ought to hurt badly, but other than
that stabbing pain right after he'd been shot, Fales felt
nothing. The anesthetic of fear and adrenaline. Mabry
stuffed the muscle tissue back into the hole, packed some
gauze into it, and then applied a pressure dressing. Both
men then crawled back out into the alley, finding cover in a
small cup-shaped space behind the main body of the
helicopter created by the bent tail boom.

The injury to his partner heightened Wilkinson's sense
of urgency. He had thought they'd have a few minutes to
set up before the pressure came. In the past, it had usually
taken ten to twenty minutes for a Somali crowd to gather
around any action on the streets. Clearly this time was
different. Speed was critical. Going in they had been told
that the main body of the assault force would be moving
from the target house in vehicles to this crash site, so he
expected them at any minute. They had to have the
wounded and dead out of the chopper, perform any

emergency medicine necessary, and place them on litters
by the time the convoy approached. Now he'd lost his team
leader.

Wilkinson moved up to the front. A Delta sniper.
Sergeant First Class James McMahon, who had been on
Super Six One when it crashed, was already on top of the
bird pulling out Bull Briley. McMahon's face was badly cut
and swollen and had already turned black and blue. He
looked like he was wearing a fright mask. Briley was
obviously dead. On impact something had sliced cleanly
through his head, angling up from just under his chin. He
was relatively easy to get at because he was strapped in the
right seat, which was now on the high side. Wilkinson
helped McMahon pull Briley up and out, and then handed
his body down. McMahon climbed down into the cockpit
and checked on Elvis.

'He’s dead,' he told Wilkinson.

The PJ felt the need to see for himself. He told
McMahon to get some attention for his face, and then
climbed up and into the bird.

It was eerily quiet inside. There had been no fire, and
there was no smoke. Wilkinson was surprised at how intact
it all was. Everything inside that hadn't been strapped down
had come to rest on the left side, which was now the
bottom. Most had been thrown to the front, and was now
piled up against the back of the pilot's seat. There was a
slight odor of fuel inside, and there were liquids draining
from places. He ran a finger into some fluid dripping down
the side, smelled and tasted it. It wasn't fuel. It was
probably hydraulic fluid. Sunlight came through the wide
right-side doors that now faced the sky.

He observed all this suspended upside down through
the right side door. Reaching down, he checked Wolcott's
neck for a pulse. He was dead. Both pilots had taken the
brunt of the impact, and Wolcott, because his side had hit
the ground, had gotten the worst of it. The whole front end
of the helicopter had folded in on him from the waist down.
He was still in his seat. His head and upper torso were
intact, but the rest of him was wedged tightly under the

instrument panel. Wilkinson tried to slide his hand between
the panel and the pilot's legs, but there was no space above
or below. He could not be lifted or pulled free. Wilkinson
then slid completely into the helicopter and crawled behind
the pilot's seat to see if it could be pulled back or reclined,
so he could slide Wolcott out that way, but that vantage
looked no better. He then climbed out and got down on the
dirt by the smashed left underside of the cockpit, digging to
see if there was a chance of creating an opening underneath
the wreck out of which Elvis's body could be extracted. But
all the tonnage of the Black Hawk had plowed hard into the
soil. There was going to be no easy way to get him out.

3

Shortly before the other Rangers came down ropes to
the crashed helicopter, Abdiaziz Ali Aden had darted out
from under the green Volkswagen. The slender Somali
teenager with the head of thick, bushy hair had seen the
helicopter clip the roof of his house before falling into the
alley. He had helped his family to safety and then returned
to protect the house from looters, only to find himself in the
middle of a gunfight.

He saw one of the Americans who roped down pick up
an M-16 from a man he had just shot. As the soldier came
toward him, Aden panicked. He slid out from under the car
and ran back into his house, slamming the door shut. He
ran to a small storage room in the front that had two
windows, one that faced out over the alleyway where the
helicopter lay, the other that looked out at Marehan Road
where more Rangers were descending. The intersection and
alley then swarmed with American soldiers, and the
shooting was loud, constant, and accelerating. The walls of
his house were built of heavy stone, so he had a safe,
ringside seat.

Aden watched the American soldiers climb hurriedly in
and out of the wrecked helicopter. They pulled a pilot out
and carried him to the tail end of it. The pilot had a deep

and terrible cut across his face and he looked eerily white
and was clearly dead. Two of the Rangers placed a big gun
on top of the Fiat across the street, which struck Aden as
funny. It turned the little car into a kind of technical.
Another of the soldiers crawled right into the trash hole.
Aden's family and their neighbors disposed of trash by
digging holes or ditches in the street outside their house,
and filling it with their dumpings. When it was full, they
burned it. This soldier just dug himself into the trash. Only
his head and rifle stuck out from the debris. He was
shooting steadily.

4

Sergeant First Class A1 Lamb was grateful for the hole.
He didn't care what was in it. They were taking fire from
all directions, and there wasn't much to hide behind.
Sammies were sticking their AK-47s down over the top of
the walls. Lamb had gone to the end of the alley at the front
of the chopper with a Delta operator. Ranger Sergeant
Mark Belda, and eager young Specialist Rob Phipps.

Phipps had roped down to the street with Specialist
John Belman, and the two had immediately knocked in a
door to get off the street. They barged in on a woman in a
turban and scarlet checkered robe who was missing a front
tooth. She screamed. Phipps saw five or six small children
hiding under a bed. The woman dropped to her knees and
put her hands up, begging them with words they didn't
understand. The Rangers backed out the door and then ran
down to the alley, where they saw the tail of the helicopter.
Standing there was Sergeant McMahon, who just shouted
at them through his swollen, bruised face. The twelve ! The
twelve!' meaning they needed more covering fire at the
twelve o'clock position.

Phipps took a spot by the stone wall the chopper had
fallen against. There was a small intersection about twenty
feet ahead where another sandy alley crossed. On the
opposite two corners were stone walls and behind them

clumps of trees. Directly behind him, jutting up from under
the wreck and growing halfway to the corner, was a big
cactus bush. That and the downed chopper hid his position
from anyone behind him. He stayed back from the corner
so that he didn't present a target from the alley in front of
him. At first he was there by himself. He got jumpy, so he
called Sergeant Lamb on his handheld radio and asked for
help. Then Staff Sergeant Steven Lycopolus moved up and
crouched on the other side of the alley, just past the hole
the Black Hawk had knocked in the south wall. His rear
was protected by the heap of stone and mortar from the
pulverized concrete. They were mainly looking to pick off
gunmen to the east who were sending a steady flow of
rounds up the alleyway, and to prevent any Sammies from
approaching the crash from that direction. It didn't take
long for one to try. A man in a loose white cotton shirt,
baggy pants, and sandals came creeping up the alley right
toward them with an AK, walking at a crouch with the
weapon held forward. Phipps shot him and he fell sideways
into the alley. Then another man ran out to retrieve the gun.
Phipps shot him. Then another man ran out. Phipps shot
him, too. Then Lamb, Belda, and Specialist Gregg Gould
moved up to join Phipps and Lycopolus. Belda joined
Phipps on his side of the alley, Gould went over by
Lycopolus, and Lamb dug into the hole.

The Chalk Two Rangers who had been first to arrive
had the six o'clock position covered. They'd fanned out to
take all four corners of the big intersection west of the
crash. The five men at the twelve o'clock spot dug in as
best they could, covering the smaller intersection to the
east. They stayed close to the helicopter. Lamb felt that
moving his men across the intersection might break down
the perimeter and risk getting them cut off.

It appeared as though many of the shots coming their
way were from the clump of trees about twenty yards over,
behind a high wall at the southeast corner across the
intersection. Rounds were chipping stone and earth around
Phipps and he could hear them puncturing the Black
Hawk’s thin metal hull.

Lycopolus and Gould were closest to the wall, and at
Lamb's direction they began throwing their grenades over
it. One by one they exploded, but the shooting continued.
So Belda shot up the trees with his SAW while Phipps
tossed his own grenades to Lycopolus. The staff sergeant
threw them, and these, too, exploded, again without effect.
So Belda tossed Lycopolus his grenades. The staff sergeant
threw the first, which exploded, and then tossed the second.
This time there was no blast. Instead, seconds later, what
looked to be the same grenade came flying back over the
high wall at them. Either Lycopolus had not removed the
safety strap on the last grenade he threw, or that one had
been a dud and the Somalis behind the wall had an
American grenade of their own.

Phipps dove forward as several voices shouted,
'Grenade!' The blast was like a gut punch. It just sucked all
the air out of him. He felt like he was on fire and his ears
rang from the blast and his nose and mouth were filled with
a bitter stabbing metallic taste. When the initial ball of fire
was gone he still felt terrible burning on both legs and on
his back. The explosion had clobbered him. His face was
blackened and beginning to swell and his eyes were puffing
shut. As Phipps regained his senses, he lifted his head and
looked back over his shoulder. Gould had also been hit and
was bleeding from the buttocks. A Somali had run into the
roadway and picked up the AK from the pile of dead and
wounded where he had been shooting earlier. The man was
taking aim when one of the D-boys back by the hole in the
wall dropped him with a quick burst. The man's head just
popped apart.

The operator waved at Phipps, shouting, 'Come on!
Come on!'

Phipps tried to stand but his left leg gave out. He tried
again and fell again .

'Come on!' shouted the D-boy.

Phipps crawled. The burning sensation was fierce now
and his left leg wasn't working right. When he got close
enough the D-boy grabbed his face and pulled him the rest
of the way in.

Phipps was panicked.

’Holy shit! I'm hit! I got shot! I got shot!’

’You’re all right,’ the D-boy reassured him. ’You’ll be all
right.’

He tore open his pants and applied a field dressing.

The wind was out of young Phipps's sails. He was out
of the fight.

5

Across the city about a mile southwest. Black Hawk
pilots Mike Goffena and Jim Yacone circled over Durant's
wrecked bird worriedly. The men in Super Six Four had
been lucky. Most of this part of the city consisted of stone
houses, hard structures, but the spot where Durant and his
copilot Ray Frank had gone down was just rag shacks and
tin huts, nothing hard enough to flip the chopper over. The
bird was built with shock absorbers to withstand a
terrifically hard impact so long as it landed in an upright
position, which the Black Hawk had.

In other ways they were less lucky. The CSAR team
had already fast-roped in at Wolcott's crash site. No one
had anticipated two choppers going down. Durant and his
copilot Ray Frank and their crew would have to be rescued
by ground forces, which meant there was going to be a
dangerous wait. Watching now from above, Goffena and
Yacone could already see Somalis spilling into alleyways
and footpaths, homing in on the downed helicopter.

A company of the QRF (2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry,
10th Mountain Division) had been summoned to help.
Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bill David, 150
soldiers on nine deuce-and-a-half trucks and a dozen
Humvees were making their way toward the Ranger base
by a roundabout route that took them out of the city.
Nobody was sure exactly how to find Durant's crash site.
They could see it all too clearly on the screens in the JOC,
but the picture couldn't tell them exactly where the downed
chopper was. Instead of just waiting for the QRF to arrive,

Garrison ordered up another emergency convoy with
whatever force could be assembled at the base. Leading it
out would be the Rangers and D-boys who had evacuated
Private Blackburn, and joining them would be dozens of
support personnel - armorers, cooks, ammo handlers, and
communications specialists, including an air force air
traffic controller - who volunteered to join the fight.

Even as this emergency convoy was leaving the base, it
was apparent to the pilots over Durant's crash site that help
would not come fast enough for the downed crew of Super
Six Four. They were minutes from being overrun by a
violent, angry Somali mob.

Trying to hold the crowds back were two Little Birds
and Goffena's Black Hawk, Super Six Two. In addition to
the two crew chiefs on Six Two, there were three D-boys,
snipers Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, Master
Sergeant Gary Gordon, and Sergeant First Class Brad
Hallings. With Sammy closing in, the Delta operators told
the pilots they could be more effective on the ground. They
might be able to hold off the mob uitil help arrived.
Goffena requested permission to insert them.

’Hey, wait, we don't even know if anybody's alive yet,'
answered Colonel Matthews, the air commander sitting
alongside Harrell in the C2 bird.

Hearing nothing from the crew on the radio, Goffena
made a low pass and caught a glimpse of Durant sitting in
the cockpit pushing at a piece of tin roof that had caved in
around his legs. So he was alive. Yacone saw Ray Frank
moving. Goffena flew low enough to catch the frustrated
look on his friend's face. Frank had been in a tail-rotor
crash just like this one several years before on a training
mission. A number of men in that aircraft had been killed.
Frank had broken his leg and crunched his vertebrae. He
had been involved in a drawn-out legal battle over it ever
since. To Goffena, the look on his friend's face said, Shit, I
can't believe this happened to me again! In the back of the
aircraft they discerned some movement, which meant either
Bill Cleveland or Tommy Field had survived, perhaps both.

Goffena informed Matthews that there were survivors.

The colonel told him to hold on.

So Shughart, Gordon, Hallings, and the crew chiefs of
Super Six Two did what they could from the air. There were
plenty of targets. The RPG gunners especially, it seemed,
had been emboldened by success. When Goffena flared the
Black Hawk in low, the wash from his rotors would
literally blow thickening crowds back. As the crowd
retreated, they exposed those with RPG tubes, who seemed
determined to hold their ground. This made hem easy
targets for the snipers. Trouble was, once the snipers
dropped them, others would dart out and pick up their
weapons.

Goffena also noticed that every time he dropped low
now he was drawing more fire himself. He and Yacone
heard the tick of bullets puncturing the metal walls of the
airframe. Now and then they saw a glowing arc out ahead,
where rounds would clip their rotor blades and spark,
tracing a bright line out in front of the cockpit. Goffena
began flying faster and tried to keep to the south side of the
crash site, where the fire didn't seem to be as heavy. But
this was hazardous, too. He knew that immediately to the
south was a neighborhood called Villa Somalia, which was
known to have a sizable Aidid militia. They worked the
radio, urging immediate help.

- Alpha Five One [Matthews], this is Super Six Two
[Goffena], we're going to need more friendlies to secure
crash site number two.

They were repeatedly assured that rescue was
imminent.

One of the Little Bird pilots reported:

- We've got to get some ground folks down here or
we're not going to be able to keep them off. There are not
enough people left onboard the aircraft to do it.

- Roger, standby, we're working on it... Okay, listen,
this is Adam Six Four [Garrison], we've got a small Ranger
element departing here in just a minute headed for the
second crash site. Someone needs to vector him in.

6

Dale Sizemore had been going nuts listening to the
radio. These were his brothers, his Ranger buddies out
there pinned down, and they were getting hammered. He
heard screams of pain and fear in the voices of hardened
men. This was the big fight they'd all been preparing for all
these years, and here he was, pacing around the radio with
a fucking cast on his arm!

Some days earlier, Sizemore had banged his elbow
goofing off in the hangar. The task force officers had
challenged all the NCOs to a volleyball match, but before
the contest the lower ranks had ambushed their
commanders and bound them to stretchers with flex cuffs
and duct tape. They then carried them out to the volleyball
court and poured water on them and humiliated them in
various ways. Not all the brass had gone quietly. Ranger
commander Steele put up the fight you'd expect from a
former lineman on Georgia's national championship
football team, and several of the Delta officers were even
harder to take down. Sizemore was the first guy to hit
Harrell, the Delta lieutenant colonel, and it had been like
hitting a cliff. Sizemore was a thickly muscled kid, with
legs like pilings, and he'd been a decent wrestler in high
school, but Harrell just tossed him to the concrete like a
flyweight. The fall dinged his elbow pretty good, but
Sizemore hadn't given it a second thought. He and five
other Rangers finally got Harrell tied down. The next day,
in a chopper on a signature flight over the city, Sizemore
had brushed the elbow on something again and noticed it
was tender and had gotten pretty big.

He woke up on his cot under the bug net early Friday
morning, two days before the raid, to find his elbow so
swollen and painful he couldn't sleep. He swallowed four
Motrins and dozed the rest of the night sitting up. At dawn
he was flown up to the hospital at the old U.S. embassy,
where they pronounced cellulitis and bursitis and made a
four-inch incision to drain the joint. Then they stitched him

back up, slapped a cast around it, put him on an IV
antibiotic drip, and told him he would be flying home to
Fort Benning on Monday.

Sizemore was crushed. He had sat alone on the hospital
bed looking out the window at another bright African
morning, amazed at how much he would miss this place.
This was Sizemore's first real combat zone, and he loved it.
The big blond SAW gunner from Illinois had both the
Ranger tab and scroll tattooed on his bulging left deltoid.
His buddies were his family.

And the hangar? Man, life in the hangar was a blast.
They still had daily P.T. (physical training) and had to pull
guard duty and other shit details, but ever since they hit
Mog not even regular army mickey mouse could fill the
available time. They played endless volleyball. An empty
storage room with concrete walls and a high ceiling turned
out to be a perfect Ping-Pong arena. The Romanians would
come over and make the ball dipsy-doodle like it had an
IQ. There was a running game of gin rummy (wily little
Private Othic had accumulated a pile of winnings) and long
sessions of board games like Risk, Scrabble, and Stratego.
When they weren't training or on some other detail, guys
passed time reading books, playing Gameboy, watching
videotapes, writing home, or just hanging out. Sizemore
liked to retreat to a hallway out behind the main hangar
where there was a steady ocean breeze, clap on
headphones, and just zone out for an hour now and then.
Then there was the beach. Even though the ocean had
sharks... a beach was a beach. With sand and dust
everywhere and showers rationed every few days, beach
mode more or less prevailed, at least compared to the usual
Ranger standards.

To anybody but Rangers, the accommodations were
austere. Each man had only about a four-by-eight-foot
rectangle of space to call his own. An informal protocol
had developed about that space; guys would ask permission
before stepping in or walking across. Each cot had thin
wooden poles sticking up from the coiners from which,
during the night, they could drape the netting to keep out

Somalia's ferocious mosquitoes. The hangar itself was
filthy. It had that musky Third World odor to it. The tarmac
with all the choppers was right outside the big open front
doors so the steady salt -air breeze that came through was
scented sweetly with jet fuel and oil. Guys had to keep their
weapons wrapped to ward off the fine dust and sand that
accumulated on everything. The roof leaked in about a
dozen spots. There were massive gaps here and there in the
tin walls, so when it rained, water poured in from all
directions. Some of the units sandbagged off their space to
keep the floodwaters at bay, which broke up the cavernous
space into warrens that had a more homey feel. The air
force guys had built themselves a nifty clubhouselike
enclosure toward the back. Before the rear wall was a big
American flag draped from the rafters, alongside a
homemade poster showing their 3rd Battalion, 75th
Regiment crest. The chopper crews were just inside the
front door, the D-boys had the corner of the hangar off to
the left as you entered, and the rest were Rangers,
Sizemore's buddies. His bunk was right in the middle
toward the back. He could prop his boots on his rucksack
and watch the rats scurry along the intricate interlace of
rafters overhead, or watch the hawks who were raising
chicks in a tree outside swoop in and nail pigeons in
midflight.

And what could be cooler than living with the Delta
operators, the 'Dreaded D'? They were the pros, totally
squared away. On the eighteen-hour flight aboard the giant
C-141 Starlifter, when the air force blueshirts insisted that
they all stay in their seats, the D-boys just blew them off.
Right after takeoff they unrolled thermal pads (the shiny
metal floor of the bird turns ice cold at altitude) and
insulated ponchos, stuck earplugs in their ears, donned eye
patches, swallowed 'Blue Bombers' (Halcyon tablets), and
racked out. They taught little tricks like wrapping tape
around the pins of their grenades to make sure none
accidentally snagged and pulled on a piece of equipment.
They wore knee pads when they went into a fight, which
made it easy to quickly drop and shoot, and stay there for

hours if necessary. If it was hot, they didn't walk around in
full battle gear. They wore T-shirts or no shirts at all, and
shorts and flip-flops. They all had sunglasses. If they'd
been up until all hours, they slept in a little in the morning.
When they went out on a mission, they took the weapons
they thought they'd need and left behind the stuff they
didn't. With the D-boys, all of whom were ranked sergeant
first class or higher, rank meant nothing. They all, officers
and noncoms, called each other by their first names or
nicknames. They were trained to think and act for
themselves. Nothing was done by the book for its own
sake; they were guided by their own experience. They
knew their weapons and tactics and business better than
anyone, and basically ran their own lives, which was an
extraordinary thing in the U.S. Army.

Some of the operators, like blond Norm Hooten or
short, stocky Earl Fillmore or the massively built Paul
Howe, held training sessions with them, imparting the finer
points of death-dealing and mayhem. Hooten showed
Specialist Dave Diemer how to better shoot his modified
SAW from the hip, and got one of the Delta armorers to fit
out a custom grip for him. They supplied some of the guys
custom-made black canvas bags to slip over a SAW, which
kept the drum of the grenade launcher from getting
knocked off when descending the rope (as often happened).
Useful things. Fillmore, who was one of the youngest of
the operators at twenty-eight, showed them how it was
possible to knock a guy unconscious by delivering a hard
kick to the thigh, shocking the femoral artery. Howe
showed them techniques for using cover in urban terrain,
and how to take down a room. It was great.

Delta operator Dan Busch had been a Ranger just a few
years back before he'd vanished into the deeply covert.
Some of the guys had known him before. Busch had
changed a lot. He was Dan now, for one thing, not Sergeant
Busch. A few of the guys in Bravo Company had known
him as a hell-raiser. Busch had always been up to
something fun. He'd surfaced here in Mog a changed man.
The wild man was now quietly religious and real mellow, a

totally different person. He spent a lot of time back on his
cot just quietly cleaning his weapons, and whipping all
comers at Scrabble.

Some were legendary soldiers, like the easygoing
veteran Tim Martin, who had a quick dry wit, a big red
blotch birthmark on his face, and a nickname, 'Griz,' that
fit. Griz was over forty and had fought in nearly every
conflict, open and secret, since Vietnam. He had been in
the army for more than twenty years. Nothing fooled or
fazed him. He had a wife and three daughters at home and
talked about his plans of retiring the following year and
starting up a business. But the coolest of all was ’Mace,'
John Macejunas, a cheerful, unpretentious former Ranger
with a bright blond flattop and a leathery tan that made him
look like a surfer. Mace wasn't as burly as the other guys
but his physique redefined the concept of being in shape.
He had so little body fat and was so buff that he looked like
a walking atlas of male musculature. In contrast to the
easygoing Giz, Mace's engine throttle was stuck in high
gear. He worked out so much, doing push-ups, sit -ups, leg
lifts, chin-ups, and tormenting himself in ways of his own
devising, that the Rangers regarded him as some sort of
mutant strain. Even the other D-boys held Mace in awe. He
was said to be absolutely fearless.

The Rangers had never had a chance to be around these
guys before, even though they'd trained together once or
twice. It was like an ongoing tutorial on soldiering from the
best in the business.

The worst thing about hangar life, of course, was no
women. There were women around, but they were all
nurses who worked in a different part of the base or over at
the UN compound and all were strictly off-limits. It was
tough. There was plenty of porn around, of course, and
many of the Rangers were humorously casual about
masturbation. Most were discreet about it, but some had
adopted a sort of crude defiance, standing up next to their
cot to announce, 'I'm going to the port-o-pot to fuckin' jack
off.' Specialist John Collett, a SAW gunner with absolutely
no shame about such matters, would brag about his

repertory, describing innovative new onanistic techniques -
’Man, you shoulda seen me last night. I shit you not, I was
gasping!' and coming up with new and unusual places to
jack off. Collett claimed to have gotten a 'harness-jack,' that
is, to have masturbated hanging from a parachute harness.
It was pitiful. One of the air force PJs got a blow-up love
doll in the mail and almost nobody laughed. All this
horniness under pressure produced even more adolescent
silliness than usual. Corporal Jim Cavaco walked around
one night with a length of nylon cord tied around the end of
his penis, holding the rope up delicately between two
fingers, telling everybody, 'Juss takin' the dawg out for a
walk.'

They played a lot of Risk, the board game where color-
coded armies vied to conquer the world. It took hours, so it
was great for killing time. Private First Class Jeff Young, a
tall, fair-haired RTO (Radio Telephone Operator) from
upstate New York with big glasses perched on a nose too
small for his long face, had grown up playing Risk with his
five brothers and was so good at it that the other guys
formed coalitions to knock him out first. Young and his
sergeant, Mike Goodale, had borrowed the game from the
D-boys early on and monopolized it so much the Delta
squadron had to have another game shipped over. Young
and Goodale set it up in front of their racks, and there was
usually the same bunch of guys stooped around it. Overthe
board, privates and sergeants and even officers all forgot
about rank. They'd be teasing each other, yelling at each
other, just like a regular bunch of guys.

Even the nightly mortar attack was kind of a joke. The
Skinnies would lob rounds into the fenced-off compound
that landed with a loud crump, like something very large
falling on a big hollow stack of tin. It freaked guys out at
first. They'd drop or dive for cover. But the Skinnies had
such lousy aim that they rarely hit anything, and after a
while guys would just drop and cheer when one landed.
Somebody, probably it was Dom Pilla, discovered that by
lifting the big door to the soda and water cooler and then
just letting it fall, it made a crump just like a mortar round.

He sent guys diving once or twice before everybody wised
up. Pretty soon when they heard the sound guys didn't even
bother to drop. They'd cheer. One night a mortar hit so
close Sizemore could see sparks from the shrapnel hitting
the outer wall of the hangar. Everybody just clapped and
hooted. Across the road, spooked air force medical
personnel, not exactly hardened battle types, were holding
hands and singing prayer songs while the crazy Hoo-ahs
across the road were cheering like mad. The boys in the
hangar had even started a pool. For a buck you could pick a
ten-minute time slot, and if a mortar round fell in your slot,
you took the pool. So after everybody cheered, they would
run to check the sheet to see who'd won. Nobody had
figured out what they'd do with the pot if the mortar
happened to fall on the winner.

The movie room had three TVs and three VCRs. Guys
always crowded in to watch CNN. Sometimes their own
missions were featured. In fact, when the force got back
from their first mission with their flex-cuffed Somali
prisoners , before they had even finished stripping off their
gear, they were astonished to see themselves on their top
secret mission on CNN, with footage shot from a distance
by infrared cameras. Nobody ever answered the reporters'
questions, and they would laugh and groan about how
outrageously wrong they got everything in the newspapers
and on TV.

There were two armed forces radio stations, one that
played almost all country music and one that divided its
play time between 'white' music, mostly classic rock, and
'black' music, mostly rap. The Rangers, who unlike the
10th Mountain Division guys based across the city were
nearly all white, would get a kick out of the dedications
during 'black' time: Yo, my brothahs and sistahs, this is 2-G
Smoothie 4-U flippin' out a disc fo' Regina at the 271st
Supply from Dope Gangsta at the 33rd. Peace! In the
evening they practically wore out the collection of
videotapes shipped over in boxes, mostly old heroic action-
adventure -type stuff. One week they had a James Bond
film festival, a different feature every night. One of the few

new releases was Last of the Mohicans, which some of the
guys had just finished watching twice in a row one night
when Captain Steele came in, saw the final credits, and
announced he hadn't seen that one yet. So they rewound it
and watched it a third time.

Most days when there wasn't a mission they trained,
which was totally cool. They got to go north of the city into
the desert and blow things up, or practice lobbing grenades
and rockets at targets or perfecting their marksmanship
with various automatic weapons. In the dunes outside Mog
there were lots of toys and more ammo than usual to go
around, and they didn't have all the range restrictions that
applied back home. Out there under the hot sun in their
desert fatigues with their floppy camouflage sun hats on
they were like a bunch of overgrown kids playing soldier...
with real bullets and grenades. It was the sort of thing that
made Rangering so cool. It was real soldiering. Hard core,
heavy metal. It was way more fun than college. They were
on an adventure, Sizemore and the rest of the guys bunked
in that hangar. They were in Africa, not behind some desk
or cash register or sitting in class staring out the window
across a sleepy campus. They did things like jump out of
airplanes, fast-rope out of helicopters, rappel down cliffs...
stuff like what they were doing over here, doing good,
chasing around an exotic Third World capital after a
murderous warlord.

Sizemore had talked the doctor into letting him return to
the hangar to spend his last day with his unit, and had just
been packing his stuff up at the hospital for the chopper
ride back when two men were brought in who had just been
wounded in a Humvee in the city by a remote-controlled
mine. There was a 10th Mountain Division guy who was
all right, and a Somali-American interpreter who had been
torn in half. From the waist down he was gone. His insides
were laying next to him on the gurney.

Sizemore had never seen such a thing. One of the man's
arms just twisted off the side of the stretcher, swinging,
attached to the trunk by a hunk of meat. Who were these
people? What made them think they could get away with

this?

When he returned to the hangar, guys were suiting up
for this mission. Sizemore had seethed with frustration and
disappointment. All the guys were saying this might be a
hot one. What if they were right? Had he come this far to
miss out on it? In his place they were sending Specialist
Stebbins, the company's training room clerk. Stebbins!
Sizemore couldn't believe his luck.

The hangar had buzzed with jitters. Even Sergeant
Lorenzo Ruiz, the boxer, was uneasy. Nothing usually
bothered Lo.

'I got a bad feeling. Dale,' he said.

Ruiz and Sizemore were tight. They had absolutely
nothing in common, but for some reason they'd hit it off
years back. Ruiz was a tough kid from El Paso, Texas, a
former amateur boxer, who had joined the army after a
judge had given him a choice between the military or
prison. In the Ranger Regiment, Ruiz had pulled his life
together and excelled. He was married and had a little girl.
Sizemore was just a big suburban kid, something of a
ladies’ man - his buddies had nicknamed him, with his full
lips and big blue eyes and broad shoulders, 'Adonis.' But
Ruiz was the real romantic. Out drinking with the guys his
temper would flash one minute and the next minute he'd be
wiping away a tear, sniffling with his Mexican accent, 'I
luff you guys.' Ruiz was superstitious, and had struggled
with premonitions of his death in Somalia. Sizemore wasn't
superstitious at all, but he'd made a pact with his buddy, to
humor him. They would both write final letters to their
families that were only to be mailed if they were killed.
They had exchanged them for safekeeping. Sizemore's was
addressed to his mom and stepfather and aunt, and mostly
just told them how much he loved them. Ruiz's told his
wife he loved her, and instructed his brother, Jorges, to care
for their mother and grandmother. Both wrote that if they
had been killed, they had died doing what they wanted to
do. There was no need to say much more. That afternoon,
as Ruiz kitted up for the mission to the Black Sea, he had
reminded Sizemore about the letter.

'Shut up, Lo,' he told him. 'You'll be back in here in a
few minutes.'

But now Ruiz was out there with the rest of the guys
catching hell - Sizemore didn't know it, but his buddy had
already been mortally wounded. Sizemore wondered where
Ruiz was, and how Goodale and Nelson were making out.
He worried about Stebbins. Jesus, Stebby was the guy who
made coffee for them! Here he was, probably the best man
with a SAW in the unit, and the company clerk was out
there fighting his battle. Sizemore was glued to the radio
outside the JOC with some other guys who had been left
behind because they had gone out on a water run shortly
before the mission came up. This group had their Humvees
parked in a semicircle outside the big open front doors to
the hangar, ready to roll if needed.

* * *

Listening to the sounds on the radio had a different
effect on Specialist Steve Anderson. It scared him.
Anderson had wanted to be a soldier so bad that he had lied
about having severe asthma when he joined. He carried his
inhaler with him everywhere. On the first day of basic
training they were all warned sternly that any drugs were
contraband and if caught with any they were in deep, dark
shit. A box was passed around the barracks and they were
told they had one last chance, an amnesty, to chuck
anything they weren't supposed to have. Anderson
panicked and threw in his inhaler, and then suffered such a
terrible asthma attack three or four days later that he had to
confess and was shipped out to a hospital. The next day the
drill sergeant told Sizemore and the rest of the guys in the
platoon that Anderson had died.

A month later, at airborne school, Sizemore spotted this
tall, skinny ghost doing KP duty, walked over, and rubbed
his eyes for a better look. Anderson had not only survived
the asthma attack, somebody in the chain of command had
admired his determination enough to let him stay in and
keep his inhaler.

But now, faced with the prospect of such pitched battle,
Anderson was infected by the panic on the radio.
Everybody was talking twice as much as usual, as if they
needed to stay in touch, as if the radio was a net to prevent
their free fall. Anderson didn't show it but he was quaking.
His stomach churned and he was in a cold sweat. Do 1 have
to go out there? Until this mission, nobody had gotten
seriously hurt. The missions were a gas. When the
megaphone sounded 'Get it on!' he had always felt, cool,
action. Just like all the other guys. Not now.

The horror hit home when Sergeant Struecker's three-
Humvee convoy had raced in, all shot up, and the docs
lifted out the broken body of Private Blackburn, the Ranger
who had fallen from the helicopter to the street. Specialist
Brad Thomas emerged from one of the Humvees with red
eyes. He saw Anderson and choked out, 'Pilla's dead.'
Thomas was crying and Anderson felt himself start to cry.
The fear was palpable. Anderson was glad to be someplace
safe. He was ashamed of himself, but that's how he felt.

He wasn't alone. Moments after they unloaded Pilla and
Blackburn, they got orders to go back out. A second Black
Hawk, Durant's, had crashed and was in danger of being
overrun. Over the radio they learned that Casey Joyce,
another of their buddies, was dead. Mace and the SEALs
who had helped bring Blackburn back were already
rearmed and ready. Anderson saw no hesitation whatsoever
with these guys. But the younger Ringers, to a man,
seemed shaken.

Brad Thomas couldn't believe it. He had been on the
beach with Joyce and Pilla when they were called for this
mission. Within the Ranger company, Thomas, Joyce,
Pilla, Nelson, and a few other guys hung together. They
were a few years older and had had a little more
experience. Joyce and Thomas were both married. Thomas
had gone to college for a few years, studying classical
guitar, before enlisting. They were less boisterous and,
when it came to taking risks, still willing but less eager.

Thomas had seen his friend Pilla killed, and had felt
through the rest of that insane ride back to the base that he

wasn't going to make it. When they arrived he had felt an
enormous sense of relief. He figured the mission was over.
Things had gone completely to shit and the rest of the guys
would be rolling back in any minute. Emotionally, for him,
the fight was done.

So when Struecker approached and instructed the men
to start rearming, they were going back out, Thomas was
incredulous.

How could they go back out into that? They'd barely
escaped with their lives. The whole fucking city was trying
to kill them!

Struecker felt his own heart sink. His vehicles were all
shot up. The rear of his Humvee was splattered with Pilla's
blood and brains. When the body was pulled out it didn't
even look like Pilla anymore. The top of his head was gone
and his face was grotesquely swollen and disfigured.
Struecker's men were freaking out.

Mace, the grim Delta warrior, pulled Struecker aside.

'Look, Sergeant, you need to clean your vehicle up. If
you don't, your guys are going to get more messed up.'

So Struecker strode over to his squad.

'Listen, men. You don't have to do this if you don't want
to. I'll do it myself if I have to. But we have to clean this
thing up right now because we're fixin' to roll right back
out. Everybody else go resupply. Go get yourselves some
more ammunition.'

Struecker asked his .50 gunner, 'Will you help me clean
up? You don't have to.’

Together they set off for buckets of water, and working
with sponges, they soaked up the blood and brain and
scraped it from the interior.

Sizemore saw all this and it made him wild with anger.
'I’m going out there with you guys,' he said.

'You can't, you're hurt,' said Sergeant Raleigh Cash,
who had been in charge of the squad that had gone on the
water run.

Sizemore didn't argue. He was wearing gym shorts and
a T-shirt and his own gear had been packed away for the
flight home tomorrow, so he ran into the hangar, pulled on

his pants and shirt, and grabbed any stray gear he could
find. He found a flak vest that was three sizes too big for
him and a helmet that lolled around on his head like a salad
bowl. He grabbed his SAW and stuffed ammo in his
pockets and pouches and came running back out to the
convoy with his boots unlaced and his shirt unbuttoned and
just climbed into Cash's Humvee.

'I'm going out,' he told Cash.

'You can't go out there with that cast on your elbow.'

'Then I'll lose it.'

Sizemore ran back into the hangar and found a pair of
scissors. He cut straight up the inside seam of the cast and
then flung it away. Then he came back and resumed his
place on the vehicle.

Cash just shook his head.

Anderson admired Sizemore's eagerness and felt all the
more ashamed of himself. He had donned his own gear, as
instructed, but he was mortified. He didn't know whether to
feel more ashamed of his fear or his sheeplike acceptance
of the orders. When it came time to climb in the vehicles he
again followed orders, amazed at his own passivity. He
would go out into Mogadishu and risk his life but it wasn't
out of passion or solidarity or patriotism, it was because he
didn't dare refuse. He showed none of this.

Not everyone was as passive. Brad Thomas pulled
Struecker aside.

'Man, you know, I really don't want to go back out.'

The sergeant had been expecting this to happen, and
dreading it. He knew how he felt about driving back into
the city. It was a nightmare. Thomas's words expressed
how everyone felt. How could he force those men back out
into the fight, especially the men who had just come
through hell to get back to base? The sergeant knew all the
men were watching to see how he'd handle it. Struecker
was a model Ranger, strong, unassuming, obedient, tough,
and strictly by-the-book. He was like the prize pupil in
class. The officers loved him, which meant at least some of
the men regarded him with a slightly jaundiced eye.
Challenged like this, they expected Struecker to explode.

Instead, he pulled Thomas aside and spoke to him
quietly, man to man. He tried to calm him, but Thomas was
calm. As Struecker saw it, the man had just decided he'd
taken all he could take. Thomas had just been married a
few months before. He had never been one of the chest-
beaters in the regiment. It was a perfectly rational decision.
He did not want to go back out there to die. The whole city
was shooting at them. How far could they get? However
steep a price the man would pay for backing down like that,
and for a Ranger it would be a steep price indeed, to
Struecker it looked like Thomas had made up his mind.

'Listen,' Struecker said. 'I understand how you feel. I’m
married, too. Don't think of yourself as a coward. I know
you're scared. I’m scared shitless. I've never been in a
situation like this either. But we've got to go. It's our job.
The difference between being a coward and hero is not
whether you're scared, it's what you do while you're scared.'

Thomas didn't seem to like the answer. He walked
away. As they were about to pull out, though, Struecker
noticed that he'd climbed on board with the rest of the men.

7

'You're going to go ahead and lead us out,’ Lieutenant
Larry Moore had instructed Struecker. 'We're going to take
these three five-tons, your two vehicles in front, my two in
the rear. The crash site is somewhere in this vicinity,' he
said, pointing to a location between the K-4 traffic circle
and the target building. 'We don't know for sure. You're
going to flip to this channel,' showing him the frequency on
his radio, 'and we have aircraft up in the sky, and the pilot
is going to tell you where to go.'

'Okay, whatever,' said Struecker.

One of the company clerks, Sergeant Mark Warner,
stepped up.

'Sergeant, can I go out?'

'You have a weapon and some ammo?'

'Yeah.'

'Go ahead, get in the backseat.'

Other volunteers were piling on vehicles down the
convoy. Specialist Peter Squeglia, the company armorer,
had pulled on fighting gear and climbed into a truck. He
had injured his ankle playing rugby in the sand with some
guys from New Zealand a few days before and had been
relegated to guard duty at the hangar. There was no way he
could use a sore ankle as an excuse to stay out of this. So
now he sat with his M-16 pointed out the passenger-side
window of a five-ton truck, wondering what he had had
gotten himself into. You joined the army and volunteered
for the Rangers ostensibly because you were willing to go
into combat, but in this day and age you didn't really expect
them to call your bluff. Squeglia considered himself more
realistic about battle than most of his Ranger buddies, even
though he had never gotten close to one. He had been put
off by some of the bravado he'd seen in the previous weeks.
He would caution his friends, 'This is real stuff. One of us
is probably going to get killed one of these times out.' And
they all laughed at him. Well, now at least one of them had
definitely been killed - he'd seen them unload Pilla's body -
and here he was in the thick of it. Here it was, a Sunday
afternoon in early fall, the kind of day back home where he
and his buddies would spend the afternoon watching
football on TV and then head out to the bars of Newport,
Rhode Island, trying to pick up girls, and here he was,
smart -guy twenty-five-year-old Peter Squeglia, riding
shotgun in a truck out into the streets of Mogadishu with
what appeared to be the entire indigenous population trying
to kill him. He felt the truck start to move.

As Struecker steered out the east gate he waited for
guidance from the C2 Black Hawk above.

- You need to turn left and then move to the first
intersection and take another left.

Struecker made the left turn on Tanzania Street, but as
he approached the intersection gunfire erupted all around.
They weren't more than eighty yards out the back gate.

In a Hurnvee behind Struecker's, Sergeant Raleigh Cash
screamed, 'Action left!'

His turret gunner swung around to face five Somalis
with weapons, and Cash, who was in the front passenger
seat, heard the explosion of gunfire and the zing and pop of
rounds passing close. Cash had been taught that if you
heard that crack it meant the bullet had passed near your
head. A zing, which sounded to him like the sound made
when you hit a telephone-pole guy wire with a stick, meant
the bullet had missed you by a far margin. The shots were
answered by a roaring fusillade.

In another of the rear Humvees, reluctant Steve
Anderson heard the eruption of gunfire and felt his stomach
turn. Then he realized most of what he heard were Ranger
guns. Any Somali with a weapon faced a crushing wave of
American lead, .50 cals on three of the Humvees, SAWs
and all those M-16s massed on the trucks.

Anderson tried to shoot his SAW, too, but the weapon
jammed. He pulled and pulled on the charging handle,
trying to get it unjammed, but it wouldn't budge. So he
picked up the driver's M-16 and took aim out the back of
the moving vehicle. An instant before he took aim he saw a
Somali with a rifle dart through a doorway, but it was too
late for him to take a shot.

The lead vehicles were taking the brunt of it. An RPC
skipped across the top of Struecker's Humvee with a
screech of metal on metal and exploded across the street
against a concrete wall with a concussion that lifted the
wide-bodied vehicle up on two wheels. Then his .50 gunner
returned fire to a massed burst of AK-47s. It occurred to
the sergeant that Sammy was unschooled in the art of
ambush. The idea was to let the lead vehicle pass and suck
in the whole column, then open fire. The unarmored flatbed
trucks in the middle loaded with cooks and clerks and other
volunteers would have made fat, vulnerable targets. By
opening up on the lead vehicles, it gave the convoy a
chance to back out before things got worse.

Struecker shouted for his driver to throw the Humvee in
reverse. Those following would just have to figure it out.
They slammed into the front of the Humvee behind them,
and then that driver threw his vehicle in reverse and backed

into the first truck. Eventually they all got the message.

'You need to find a different route!' he told his eyes in
the sky.

- Go back where you came from and turn right instead
of left. You can get there that way.

Struecker got the whole column back up to the gate, and
this time turned right. Looming ahead was a roadblock, a
big one. While a lot of the people shooting at them were
clearly amateurs, it was obvious there were some
experienced military minds among them. This roadblock
was nothing spontaneous. They had anticipated the routes a
convoy might take from the Ranger base and had thrown
up barriers of dirt, junk, furniture, vehicle hulks, chunks of
concrete, wire, and whatever else was at hand. There were
tires burning on it that threw churning clouds into the
darkening sky. Struecker could taste the sting of the
burning rubber. The convoy knew Super Six Four was
down less than a mile away, directly ahead.

Durant would say later that he heard the sound of a .50
cal, which almost certainly was from Struecker's Humvee.
The pilot believed deliverance was at hand. But the convoy
could advance no closer. Beyond the roadblock, between
where they sat and Durant's crippled Black Hawk, was a
concrete wall surrounding the sprawling ghetto of huts and
walking paths. Struecker knew his Humvees could roll over
the roadblock, but there was no way the trucks behind him
would make it. And even if they did, there wasn't going to
be any way through the concrete wall.

- See where those tires are burning? That's where the
crash is. Go in one hundred meters past it.

'You'll have to find us another route,' Struecker
responded.

- There ain 't another route.

'Well, you need to find one. Hgure out a way to get
there.'

- The only other route is to go all the way around the
city and come in through the back side.

'Fine. We'll take it.'

Struecker knew every minute mattered. Durant and his

crew wouldn't last long. It seemed like it took forever for
the five-tons to turn around on the narrow street. The trucks
weren't delicate about it. They rammed into walls and
ground gears. As the trucks fought their way around, most
of the men moved out into the street to defend the convoy.
On one knee in the dirt, Sergeant Cash took a whack on his
chest that almost knocked him over. It felt like someone
had punched him up near the shoulder. He ran his hand
inside his shirt, looking for blood. There was none. The
bullet had skimmed off the front of his chest plate, tearing
the straps of his load-bearing harness so that it was now
hanging by threads.

Squeglia saw a round clip off the side-view mirror of
the truck on the driver's side, and reached his M-16 across
the chest of the driver to return fire. Sizemore unloaded on
everything he saw, venting his pent-up rage. Anderson kept
his head down, looking for specific targets. He shot a few
times, but didn't think he'd hit anyone.

When they all got pointed at last in the right direction,
the convoy sped out along a road that skirted the city to the
southwest, driving through an occasional hail of AK-47
fire. From the peak of one rise they could see Durant's
crash site. It was down in a little valley, but there seemed
no easy way to get there.

8

Up in their Black Hawk, Goffena and Yacone could see
both convoys in trouble. Lieutenant Colonel McKnight's
battered main convoy was steering back toward the K-4
circle, away from both crash sites, and the emergency
convoy of cooks and volunteers wasn't getting close.

They qgain asked to insert their Delta snipers. They
were down to just two now. Sergeant Brad Hallings had
manned one of Super Six Two's miniguns after one of the
crew chiefs was injured. They would need him there.

Captain Yacone turned around in his seat to dis cuss the
situation with the two Delta operators.

'Things are getting bad now, guys,' Yacone told them,
shouting over the chopper's engines and the sound of the
guns. 'The second convoy is taking intensive fire, and it
doesn't sound like it's gonna make it to the crash site. Mike
and I have ID’ed a field about twenty-five to fifty yards
away from where they're down. There are lots of shacks
and shanties in between. Once you get there, you could
either hunker down and wait for the vehicles, or try to get
the wounded to an open area, where we could come back in
and get you.'

Shughart and Gordon both indicated they were ready to
go down.

Up in the command bird, Harrell pondered the request.
It was terribly risky, maybe even hopeless. But one or two
properly armed, well-trained soldiers could hold off an
undisciplined mob indefinitely. Shughart and Gordon were
experts at killing and staying alive. They were serious,
career soldiers, trained to get hard, ugly things done. They
saw opportunity where others could see only danger. Like
the other operators, they prided themselves on staying cool
and effective even in extreme danger. They lived and
trained endlessly for moments like this. If there was a
chance to succeed, these two believed they would.

In the C2 bird, seated side by side, Harrell and
Matthews weighed the decision. Their entire air rescue
team was on the ground already at the first crash site. The
ground convoy wasn't going to get to Durant and his crew
fast enough. But dropping in Shughart and Gordon would
most likely be sending them to their deaths. Matthews
turned down the volume on their radios momentarily.

'Look, they're your guys,' he said to Harrell. 'They're the
only two guys we've got left. What do you want to do?'

'What are our choices?' Harrell asked.

'We can put them in or not put them in. Nobody else is
going to get to that crash site that I can see.’

'Put them in,' said Harrell.

So long as there was even a tiny chance, they felt
obliged to give it to the downed crew.

When Goffena's crew chief. Master Sergeant Mason

Hall, passed word to the men that it was time to jump,
Gordon grinned and gave an excited thumbs-up.

There was a small opening behind one of the huts. It
was bordered by a fence and covered by some debris, but it
might do. Goffena made a low pass at it, flaring up near the
ground to blow over the fence and scatter the debris. He
couldn't get rid of enough of it to land, so he held a hover at
about five feet as Shughart and Gordon jumped.

Shughart got tangled momentarily on the safety lne
connecting him to the chopper and had to be cut free.
Gordon took a spill as he ran for cover. Shughart stood
motioning with his hands, indicating confusion. They'd
gotten disoriented jumping down, and were crouched in a
defensive posture in the open trying to get their bearings.
Goffena dropped the chopper back down low, leaned out
his door, and pointed the way. One of his crew chiefs flung
a smoke grenade in the direction of the crash.

The operators both turned thumbs up and began moving
that way.

9

More than a mile to the northeast, back at Chalk Two's
original blocking position by the target building, the war
had slowed down for Sergeant Ed Yurek. After stumbling
into the small Somali schoolhouse and coaxing the teacher
and children to the floor, Yurek had been left in charge of
the remnants of his chalk when Lieutenant DiTomasso and
eight other Rangers had sprinted down to help out at the
first crash site. Yurek had seen the ground convoy drive
off. As the fighting shifted to the Black Hawk crash site
three blocks east, things grew so quiet on Yurek’s corner he
got spooked. With the lieutenant and his radioman gone, he
had no contact with the command radio net. He was
worried the whole force had forgotten them.

He used his personal radio to call DiT omasso.

'What's up. Lieutenant?'

- You need to find your way to me. 'Roger, sir. Where

are you?'

- Take that big alley three blocks east, then turn left. Go
about two hundred meters. You can't miss us.

'Roger.'

It was and it wasn't good news. It felt like they'd finally
gotten this small corner of Mogadishu tamed. They'd
grown familiar with angles of fire and potential danger
spots and had found what seemed to be adequate cover.
The kids in the little tin schoolhouse had been quiet as
mice. Yurek had been keeping an eye out for them. Out in
this very dangerous city, with bullets and RPGs flying, he
was loathe to give up what seemed to have become a safe
and quiet corner. They could hear heavy shooting over by
the crash site, and once they were up and moving down the
road, they'd have no cover. DiTomasso and the first men
down the road had at least had the element of surprise.
Yurek's would be the second team to pass through the same
gauntlet. He had no doubt Sammy would be waiting.

'Come on, guys. We gotta go!' he reluctantly informed
the men.

They began moving east down the alley. They walked
fast, weapons aimed and ready, in single file spread out
down the south side of the alley. They stayed a few steps
off the stone walls on that side of the street. The natural
inclination was to get as close to the wall as possible. The
wall suggested at least a margin of safety. But Sergeant
Paul Howe, one of the D-boys, had advised them against it.
Bullets follow walls, he'd explained. The enemy can
concentrate fire down an alleyway, and the walls on either
side will act as funnels. Some rounds would actually ride
the walls for hundreds of feet. Standing tight against a wall
was actually more dangerous than being in the middle of
the street.

At the intersections they would stop and cover each
other. Yurek ran while his men laid suppressing fire north
and south. Then he covered for the next man, and so on.
They leapfrogged across.

It didn't take long for the shooting gallery to open.
Sammies would pop up in windows or doorways or around

comers and spray bursts of automatic fire. Most were
clearly amateurs. The kick of the weapon and their own
desire to stay behind cover meant they were unlikely to hit
anyone. Yurek figured these were guys just trying not to
lose face with their group. They would let a burst fly with
their head turned away and eyes closed, fling the weapon,
and run. Yurek didn't even bother returning fire for some of
these. But some of the men who popped up in windows
were different. They didn't shoot instantly. They took aim.
They meant business. He figured these were Aidid's militia
guys. There was usually one militia guy for every four or
five who shot at them.

Yurek and his men invariably shot first. During the long
boring weeks before this mission, they had trained almost
daily. Captain Steele had insisted on it. They had unlimited
ammo to work with, and out in the desert they had set up a
variety of shooting ranges, including this very drill. In
practice, targets would pop out unexpectedly. They had
different shapes and colors. The rules were, shoot if you
see the blue triangle, but hold your fire if it's a green
square. Yurek felt the benefit of all that practice. He and
his men engaged in a running series of gunfights. He shot
one man in a doorway just ten feet away. The man stepped
out and took aim, a bushy-haired, dusty man with baggy
brown pants and a lightweight blue cotton shirt with an
AK. He didn't shoot instantly, and that's what killed him.
Yurek’s eyes met his for a split second as he pulled the
trigger. The Somali just fell forward out into the alley
without getting off a shot. He was the second man Yurek
had ever shot.

Specialist Lance Twombly blasted at one man with his
SAW, shooting the big gun from his hip. The Sammy had
stepped out from a corner with an AK and started shooting.
Both he and the Ranger blasted away at each other not
more than fifteen yards apart. Twombly saw his rounds -
there must have been forty of them - chipping the walls and
spitting up dirt all around his target, and he never hit the
man. Nor did the Somali hit Twombly. The Sammy ran off.
Twombly just kept on moving, cursing himself for being

such a bad shot.

Yurek could not believe it when they made it the entire
three blocks without any of his men being hit. But there
was no respite. At the intersection of the main road he
looked downhill and saw Waddell against the wall on his
side of the street. Across the street at the opposite corner,
behind a big tree and car, were Nelson and Sergeant Alan
Barton, who'd roped in from the CSAR bird. Twombly
moved down that side of the street and crossed the road to
add his SAW to Nelson's M-60. There were two dead
Somalis stretched out on the ground by the car. Across the
street from them, diagonally from Waddell, was a little
green \61kswagen. DiTomasso and some men from the
CSAR bird were crouched there.

Yurek ran across the road to the car to link up with
DiTomasso. He passed the alley and saw the downed
helicopter to his right. Just as he arrived, the Volkswagen
began rocking from the impact of heavy rounds, thunk
tlmnk thunk thunk. Whatever this weapon was, its bullets
were poking right through the car. Yurek and the others all
hit the ground. He couldn't tell where the shooting was
coming from.

'Nelson! Nelson, what is it?' he shouted across the
street.

'It's a big gun!’ Nelson shouted back.

Yurek and DiTomasso looked at each other and rolled
their eyes.

'Where is it?' he shouted across to Nelson.

Nelson pointed up the street, and Yurek edged out to
look around the car. There were three dead Somalis on the
street. Yurek stood and pulled them together, stacking
them, which enabled him to slide out to his left a few feet
behind cover. He saw two Somalis stretched out on the
ground up the street north behind a big gun mounted on a
tripod. From that position the gun controlled the street.
Behind the tree across the street, they couldn't see Nelson,
and he'd have been a fool to expose his position.

Yurek had a LAW (Light Antitank Weapon) strapped to
his back that he'd been carrying around on every mission

for weeks. It was a lightweight disposable plastic launcher
(it weighed only three pounds). He unstrapped it, then
climbed up and leaned forward on the car, taking aim with
the weapon's flip-up crosshairs. He guessed they were two
hundred meters away. The rocket launched with a punch of
a back blast, and Yurek watched it zoom straight in on his
target and explode with a flash and a loud wooml The gun
went flipping up in the air.

He was accepting congratulations on his shooting when
the thunk thunk thunk resumed. The rocket had evidently
landed just short, close enough to send the weapon flying
and kick up a cloud of dirt, but evidently not close enough
to destroy it or stop its shooters. He saw them up the street
now kneeling behind the weapon, which they'd righted
again on its bipod. Yurek picked up a LAW that someone
had discarded nearby, but it looked bent and crushed. He
couldn't get it to open up. So he loaded a 40 mm 203 round
into the grenade launcher mounted under the barrel of his
M-16. This time his aim was better. You could actually see
the fat 203 round spiral into a target, and this one spun
square into the center. The two Sammies just fell over
sideways in opposite directions. He presumed the gun was
destroyed. When the smoke cleared he could see it just
lying there between the two men. No one else came out to
get it. Yurek and the others kept a good eye on that gun
until nightfall.

10

Barton and Nelson were behind a tree on the northeast
corner of the big intersection directly west of the crash. A
little Fiat was parked against the tree. It looked like the
driver had left it with the gas cap wedged tightly against
the tree to prevent Mogadishu's alert and enterprising
thieves from siphoning the gas. Nelson had his M60
machine gun propped on the roof of the car with belts of
ammo draped over the side. From the two dead Somalis on
the street alongside the car, blood formed red-brown pools

in the sand.

'It can't get much worse than this,’ Barton said.

Just then an RPG exploded against the opposite wall
with a brilliant flash and a chest-wrenching blast. This
made them laugh. Laughter was a balm. It held panic at bay
and it seemed to come easily. In these extreme
circumstances it became unbearably funny just to act
normal. If they could still laugh they were all right. This
was definitely more fire than they'd ever expected to
experience in Mogadishu. Nobody had anticipated a serious
fight from these characters. Nelson wondered where his
friends Casey Joyce and Dom Pilla and Kevin Snodgrass
were and how they were faring.

It was raining RPGs. They would drop down from the
north and hit the side of the stone buildings and splash
along the walls, great streaking explosions, like someone
throwing fireballs.

'Goddamn, Twombly, this is unreal,’ Nelson said.

He crouched down behind a two -foot concrete ramp
between the tree and the wall and was fiddling with his M-
60 when a Somali ducked out from behind a tin shed about
ten feet up the street and fired at him and Twombly. Nelson
knew he was dead. Rounds hit between his legs and he felt
them passing next to his face. Twombly dropped the man.

Nelson saw Twombly mouth the words, 'You okay?'

'I don't know.'

Twombly had fired his SAW about two feet in front of
Nelson's face, so close that his cheeks and nose had been
singed by the muzzle heat. The blast had hammered his
eardrums, blinded him, and his head was still ringing.

'That hurt,' Nelson complained. 'I can't hear and I can't
see. Don't you ever fucking shoot your weapon off that
close to me again!'

Just then another Somali took a shot at them and
Twombly returned fire with his rifle directly over Nelson’s
head. After that, Nelson wouldn't hear a thing for many
hours.

11

Sergeant Paul Howe and the three men of his Delta
team had still been back on the target house roof when they
saw the CSAR team roping down from a Black Hawk
about a quarter mile northeast. They watched while the
Black Hawk took the RPG hit with men still on its ropes,
and were amazed at how the pilot held the bird steady after
being hit until the last men were down. Howe knew
something was going on over there, but since he had no
radio link to the command net and had been too busy inside
the target house to notice that a Black Hawk had been shot
down, he didn't know why the CSAR team was roping in.

He got the full story when he was summoned
downstairs by the Delta ground commander, Captain Scott
Miller.

’We're going to move over there and secure it,’ Miller
said. He explained that the ground convoy, which was
loading the Somali prisoners out front, would drive over to
the crash site. The rest of them were going to move there
on foot. Ranger Chalk One, led by Captain Steele, would
take the lead. The operators would follow, and Ranger
Chalk Three on the south end of the target, led by Sergeant
Sean Watson, would bring up the rear.

Howe knew the fight was bad and worsening out on the
streets. The idea of moving on foot over to where he'd seen
the CSAR bird rope its crew in was daunting. He thought,
This is going to be fun.

Captain Steele saw the operators come spilling out of
the courtyard, moving east toward him. This posed a novel
situation for the Ranger commander. He and his men had
trained to provide protection for Delta, but the two units
didn't mix. Each had its own chain of command, its own
separate radio links, and, most importantly, its own way of
doing things. Now they were being thrown together for this
move over to the downed Black Hawk. Steele and Miller
conferred briefly about how to proceed, and agreed that the
Rangers should take front and rear positions.

This column of about eighty men would set off on foot
just minutes after Lieutenant Colonel McKnight's ill-fated
convoy departed the target building. While that convoy
wandered hopelessly lost through the city, getting
hammered, and while Durant's Black Hawk was crashing
about a mile southwest, this force of D-boys and Rangers
were having their own tragic difficulties moving on foot to
the first crash site.

They hadn't run more than a block when Sergeant
Aaron Williamson got hit. He had been shot earlier, the
round had taken off the tip of his index finger, but
Williamson had kept fighting. Lieutenant Perino heard
someone scream, and turned to see Williamson rolling on
the street, writhing and screaming, holding his left leg.

’I’ve got a man down,' Perino radioed up to Steele.

Tick him up and keep on moving,' Steele said.

As Howe and his team ran past Williamson, there were
five Rangers stooped around the wounded man.

'Keep moving and let the medic handle it!' Howe
shouted at them.

Williamson was carried back up the street to one of the
Humvees in the ground convoy, which was about ready to
roll.

Specialist Stebbins, the company clerk along for his
first real mission, was out in front. His blocking position
had been at the southeast comer, and they were moving
east now. He trotted crouched and careful, staying away
from the walls as the D-boys had advised. Every few feet
down the road a doorway would open into a small
courtyard. As Stebbins came upon one door, a Somali came
running out of the building into the courtyard and Stebbins
fired. It was instinctive. The man startled him. Bang bang.
Two rounds. The man dropped to a sitting position,
clutching his chest and looking amazed. Then he slumped
over forward and began to iock and moan. He was a big
man with short hair. He was wearing this disco-style bright
blue shirt with long sleeves and a big collar. Most of the
Sammies were dusty and wore shabby clothes but this man
was dressed nicely, and he was clean. He had on corduroy

bell-bottom pants and his belt had a big die -cast metal
buckle. He seemed completely out of place. Stebbins had
just shot him. He had never shot anyone before.

This all took place in seconds but it seemed much
longer. Stebbins was readying to shoot the man again when
his weapon was grabbed by Private Carlos Rodriguez.

’Don't waste your rounds on him, Stebby,' he said. 'Just
keep moving.'

Steele, who had a radio strapped to his broad back, fell
further and further behind Lieutenant Perino and the rest of
Chalk One. The idea was to stay spread out and provide
covering fire for each other as they went through
intersections. But right away, to Steele's dismay, the
formation broke down. The D-boys ignored the marching
orders and just kept moving forward. These were men
trained to think for themselves and act independently in
battle, and now they were doing it. Each of the operators
had a radio earpiece under their little plastic hockey
helmets - Steele called them 'skateboard helmets' - and a
microphone that wrapped around to their mouth. So they
were usually in constant touch with each other. When the
radios were not working or when the noise level was too
high, as it was now, the Dboys communicated expertly
with hand signals. Steele's Rangers relied on shouted orders
from their officers and team leaders. They were younger,
less experienced, and terrified. Some tended to just follow
the operators instead of staying with their teams. Steele saw
a complete breakdown of unit integrity before they'd
moved two blocks.

It was typical of the problems he'd had with Delta from
the start. For better or worse, the attitudes and practices of
the elite commandos started to rub off on his Rangers when
they began bunking together in the hangar. Before long,
everywhere you looked was a teenage soldier in sunglasses
with rolled-up shirtsleeves. Privates would pull guard duty
in helmet, flak vest, gym shorts, and their regulation brown
T-shirts. Younger soldiers began showing more and more
impatience with what they saw as meaningless robot-
Ranger formality.

When Steele cracked down, a lot of them thought it was
because their captain felt threatened by the D-boys. In the
year before this deployment, the broad-beamed former
lineman moved through his men like muttering Jove
through his hinds, the meanest, manliest man in the army.
When Specialist Dave Diemer had defeated all comers in
an arm wrestling contest, Steele took him on and beat him -
leaving Diemer whining that the captain had cheated.
Steele gave the unapologetic impression that he could
break you with his bare hands if it weren't for his strict
devotion to Jesus and army discipline. He was unbending
even when his senior noncoms thought it was time to bend,
like the time back at Fort Bragg when he'd ordered all the
men awakened after midnight because they'd collapsed,
with permission from their platoon sergeants, into bunks
without cleaning their weapons after a days-long grueling
training mission. But no matter how tough Steele was, of
course, it was the D-boys who occupied tie absolute
pinnacle of the macho feeding chain. Most of them were
NCOs, and not only did their very presence deflate any of
the standard displays of gruff manhood, they were serenely
and rather obviously unimpressed with Steele's captaincy.

The disdain was mutual. Steele accepted that these
operators were good at their jobs, but he wasn't in awe of
them. He found their civilian manner and contemptuous
attitude toward Ranger discipline hard to take. Sure, it was
a good idea to encourage individual initiative and creative
thinking in combat, but some of these guys had strayed so
far from traditional army norms it seemed unhealthy. They
could be comically arrogant. When they'd gotten a list of
potential target sites, for instance, the D-boys had divvied
them up among different teams. Each was assigned to draw
up an assault plan. Since his men were involved, Steele had
sat in on the meeting when the various schemes were
presented. The captain's experience with such a planning
session was like this: You sat there and took notes and
asked questions only to make sure you got things down
correctly and then saluted on your way out. The D-boys'
meeting was a free-for-all. One group would present its

plan and somebody would pipe up, 'Why, that's the
stupidest thing I ever heard,' which would provoke a sturdy
'Fuck you,' which quickly degenerated into guys screaming
at each other. It looked to Steele like they were about to
assume Kung Fu stances and have it out.

Steele could imagine what would happen if a company
of Rangers operated that way. Some of his men were still
boys. As far as the captain could tell, most had just
emerged from a lifetime of lounging on sofas eating Fritos
and watching MTV. Basic and Ranger training had shaped
most of them up reasonably well, but the average private in
Bravo company still had a long way to go before qualifying
as a professional soldier. There were good, time -tested
reasons for Hoo-ah discipline.

It was easy to see why Steele was destined for the
losing end of a popularity contest with the D-boys. Most of
his men didn't think through the causes. They saw it all as
an ego conflict.

Like the time Steele was standing in line with his men
at mess, and spotted Delta Sergeant Norm Hooten carrying
a rifle with the safety off. Ranger rules required that any
weapon, loaded or unloaded, have the safety on at all times
when at the base. It was an eminently sensible rule, a basic
principle of handling weapons safely.

He tapped the blond operator on the shoulder and
pointed it out.

Hooten had held up his index finger and said, 'This is
my safe.’

Showed Steele up right in front of his men.

Now the very breakdowns the captain had feared were
happening when it mattered most. There was nothing he
could do about it. As his men passed by helter-skelter,
Steele fell back near the middle of the pack. They'd sort
things out at the crash site. If they could find it. Nobody
was sure exactly where it was.

In short order, Howe and his Delta team were in front
of the force. Howe saw bullets skipping off the dirt and
skimming down the walls, chipping the concrete. He was
way past worrying about staying in formation. The street

was a kill zone. Survival meant moving like your hair was
on fire. It was time to lead by example. The goal was to
punch through to the downed helicopter, and every second
mattered. If they failed to link up, then there would be two
weak forces instead of a single strong one. Two perimeters
to defend instead of one. So they moved quickly but also
smartly. As Howe moved he thought about making every
one of his shots count, and keeping his back to a wall at all
times. They were in a 360-degree battlefield, so keeping a
wall behind him meant one angle he couldn't be shot from.
At each crossroads he and his team would pause, watch,
and listen. Were bullets hitting walls? Bouncing off the
streets? Were the shots going left to right or right to left?
Every bit of experience and practical knowledge was useful
now for staying alive. Were they machine-gun bullets or
AKs? An AK only has twenty-five to thirty rounds in a
magazine, so if you waited for the lull, Sammy would be
reloading when you ran. The most important thing was to
keep moving. One of the hardest things in the world to hit
is a moving target.

He and his team had spent years training with each
other, had fought together in Panama and other places, and
moved with confidence and authority. Howe felt that they
were the perfect soldiers for this situation. They'd learned
to filter out the confusion, put up a mental curtain. The
only information that came fully through was the most
critical at that moment. Howe could ignore the pop of a
rifle or the snap of a nearby round. It was usually just
somebody shooting airballs. It would take chips flying
from a wall near him to make him react. As they moved
down the street it was one fluid process - scan for threats,
find a safe place to go next, shoot, move, scan for threats...
The key was to keep moving. With the volume of fire on
these streets, to stop meant to die. The greatest danger was
in getting pinned down.

The Rangers followed as well as they could,
leapfrogging across the intersections. Stebbins and 60-
gunner Private Brian Heard kept up with them, reassured
just to be close to the D-boys. These guys knew how to

stay alive. Stebbins kept telling himself. This is dangerous,
but we'll make it. It's okay. At the intersections he would
take a knee and shoot while the man in front of him ran.
Then the man behind him would tap his shoulder and he
would take off, just closing his eyes and praying and
running for all he was worth.

Sergeant Goodale, who had once bragged to his mother
how eager he was for combat, felt terrified. He was waiting
for his turn to sprint across a street when one of the D-boys
tapped him on the shoulder. Goodale recognized him: it
was the short stocky one, Earl, Sergeant First Class Earl
Fillmore, a good guy. Fillmore must have seen how scared
Goodale looked.

'You okay?' he asked.

’I’m okay.'

Fillmore winked at him and said, 'It's all right. We’re
coming out of this thing, man.'

It calmed Goodale. He believed Fillmore.

By the time they were three blocks over, Howe's team
was way out front. With them were Stebbins, Heard,
Goodale, Perino, Corporal Jamie Smith, and a few other
Rangers. They turned left onto Marehan Road, where the
alley ended. The wide dirt road sloped uphill slightly and
then downhill for several blocks, so when they made the
turn they were just shy of the crest of a hill. Downhill to the
south they could see Sammies running every which way.
Over the crest of the hill to the north, Howe saw signal
smoke from what must have been the crash. They were
about two hundred yards away.

There was a blizzard of fire at that intersection.
Automatic rifle fire and RPGs from all directions. Howe
felt the force was in peril of getting Suck and cut to
ribbons. He shouted back down the street to Captain Miller,
'Follow me!' and plunged straight down the left side.
Stebbins and several other Rangers followed. Perino,
Goodale, Smith, and some others followed Hooten's Delta
team across the street and started down the right wall.
Immediately behind them was Sergeant First Class John
Boswell's Delta team.

An RPG exploded on the wall near Howe and his men.
Howe felt the wallop of pressure in his ears and chest and
dropped to one knee. One of his men had been hit on the
left side with a small piece of shrapnel. Howe abruptly
kicked in the door to a one-room house on his left. He and
his team had learned to move like they owned the world.
Every house was their house. If they needed shelter, they
kicked in a door. Anyone who threatened them would be
killed. It was that simple. No one was inside. They caught
their breath and reloaded their weapons. Running with all
that gear was exhausting. The body armor was like wearing
a wet suit. They were sweating profusely and breathing
heavily. Howe drew his knife and cut away the back of his
buddy's shirt to check the wound. There was a small hole in
the man's back with about a two-inch swollen, bruised ring
around it. There was almost no blood. The swelling had
closed the hole.

'You're good to go,’ Howe told him, and they were out
the door and moving again.

* * *

Moving up in front of Perino, Goodale saw the familiar
desert uniforms down the street and inwardly rejoiced.
They'd made it! Once they'd linked up, the convoy would
arrive and they could all roll out of this hell. The sun was
getting low in the sky. Goodale had promised his fiancee,
Kira, that he'd call tonight. He had to get back in time to
make that call.

Goodale ran up behind Sergeant Chuck Elliot, who was
squatting at the corner of the first intersection on the slope,
shooting east. Goodale pointed his gun down Marehan
Road. He saw Howe and his team pushing on ahead across
the street, in shadow. The low sun still lit Goodale's side of
the street brightly. Because they were on a slope, he could
shoot over the heads of the men down the street at Somalis
moving three or four blocks north. It was a long shot, but
he had no other targets. It occurred to him that no one was
shooting to the left, the alley west. It blinded him to look

that way. Goodale turned to squint into the light and pop
off a few suppressive rounds when he felt a shooting pain.
His right leg seized up and he fell over backward, right into
Perino.

He said, 'Ow!'

A bullet had entered his right thigh and passed through
him, leaving a big exit wound on his right buttock. What
immediately flashed into Goodale's mind was a story he'd
heard about this 10th Mountain Division guy who had lost
his hand the week before when a round detonated the
grenade in the LAW he was carrying. He struggled to get
the LAW off his shoulder.

Perino couldn't tell what Goodale was doing.

'Where are you hit?' he asked.

'Right in the ass.'

Goodale dropped the LAW and yelled to Elliot, 'There's
a LAW right there!'

Elliot obligingly picked it up.

Perino got back on the radio to Steele, who was now
trailing the column.

'Captain, I've got another man hit.'

'Pick him up and keep moving,' Steele insisted.

Instead, Perino moved on across the intersection with
some of the other Rangers from Chalk One, and left
Goodale with Sergeant Bart Bullock, the same Delta medic
who had earlier in the fight helped patch up Ranger Todd
Blackburn after his fall from the Black Hawk. Both
Bullock and medic Kurt Schmid had rejoined their Delta
units at the target house after sending Blackburn back to
base in the three-Humvee convoy (the one on which
Sergeant Pilla had been killed). Schmid was now moving a
block north with Perino and several other Rangers.
Goodale lay back on the dirt as Bullock looked him over.

'You got tagged,' Bullock said. 'You're all right though.
No problem.’

Goodale was disgusted. Game over. It was the same
feeling he'd had getting injured in a football game. They
carried you off the field and you were done. It was
disappointing, but if the going had been particularly rough

it could also be a relief. He took off his helmet, then saw an
RPG fly past no more than six feet in front of him and
explode with a stupendous wallop about twenty feet away.
He put his helmet back on. This game was most definitely
not over.

’We need to get off this street,' Bullock said.

He dragged Goodale into a small courtyard, and the
Delta team headed by Sergeant Hooten hopped in with
them. Goodale asked Bullock for his canteen, which the
medic had taken off when removing his gear. Bullock
fished it out of Goodale's butt pack and discovered a bullet
hole clean through it from the same round that had passed
through his body. There was still water in the canteen.
'You'll want to keep this,' Bullock said.

With the men at the rear of the column. Captain Steele's
overriding goal was to consolidate his Ranger force and
reestablish some order. Time was essential here. Steele had
been told the convoy would probably reach the crash site
before he and his men did. He had just heard on the radio
that another Black Hawk had gone down (Durant's), which
meant things were that much more urgent. From the C2
bird, Harrell explained:

- We are going to try to get everyone consolidated at
the northern site and exfil everyone off the northern site
and move to the southern crash site, over.

Steele had about sixty men to account for when those
vehicles arrived, and right now he had only a vague idea
where they all were.

As he arrived at the intersection at the top of the rise, he
ran across to the right side of the street with Lieutenant
James Lechner and several other Rangers. Sergeant Watson
and the remainder of Chalk Three were the last to turn the
corner.

Steele moved over the slight rise and started down the
hill. He had gone only about ten yards when a burst of fire
forced him and those with him to drop. He was on his
belly, with his wide face nearly in the sand. Alongside to
his left was Sergeant Chris Atwater, his radioman. Prone to
Atwater's left was Lieutenant

Lechner, Steele's second-in-command. Atwater and
Steele, both big men, were trying to take cover behind a
tree with a trunk only about one foot wide.

About three strides to their right, Delta team leader
Hooten was in a steel doorway to the small courtyard
where Bullock had dragged Goodale. Steele was watching
another team of operators working their way up the street
ahead of him. He intended to follow, but just then one of
the D-boys, Fillmore, went limp. His little helmet jerked up
and back and blood came spouting out of his head. It was
obviously fatal. Fillmore just crumpled.

An operator grabbed Fillmore and began dragging him
into a narrow alley. Then he was shot, in the neck.

Steele felt the gravity of their predicament hit fully
home. This is for keeps.

12

Mohamed Sheik Ali moved swiftly around his
neighborhood. Ali had been fighting in these streets already
for a decade, since he was fourteen years old and had been
drummed into Siad Barre's army. He moved mostly in
crowds, darting from hiding place to hiding place, usually
staying far enough away to make himself a hard target, but
occasionally stealing close enough to fire off a few well-
placed rounds from his AK. If the Americans spotted him,
they saw a short, dusty little man with nappy hair whose
teeth were brownish orange from chewing khat and whose
eyes were wide with the effects of the drug and adrenaline.

Sheik Ali was a professional gunman, a killer, a man
who had fought for and against the dictator, and then had
put himself and his weathered weapon up for hire. Most
Somalis had come to regard Sheik Ali and men like him as
a plague. They were feared and despised. Now, with the
Rangers to fight, men like him were valued again. To him,
the Americans were just a new enemy to shoot at, and not a
particularly brave one. Ali believed if the Rangers didn't
have the helicopters helping them from above, he and his

men would surround and kill them with ease, with their
bare hands.

He relished the fight. There was no quarter given on
either side. The black vests who came with the Rangers
were especially ruthless killers. When they had come to
Bakara Market they had come into his home uninvited and
they would have to accept his punishment. Sheik Ali
believed the radio broadcasts and flyers printed up by the
Aidid's SNA. The Americans wanted to force all Somalis to
be Christians, to give up Islam. They wanted to turn
Somalis into slaves.

When the helicopter was shot down he rejoiced, and
began running toward it. Unlike most of the crowd he did
not run directly to the crash. He knew there would be
armed men around it and that the Rangers would move to
it. It would not be easy to get close.

Sheik Ali was part of a large number of irregular militia
moving in the crowds that had begun to form a wide
perimeter in the neighborhood around the crashed
helicopter. He ran up a street parallel to the moving
Rangers. He would run to a corner, wait by it, and shoot as
the Rangers came across, then he would sprint to the next
street and be waiting for them again. He was not weighted
down with armor and gear, and he was not being shot at
from all directions, so he could move faster and more
freely than the Rangers. When he got to the perimeter
around the crash site there were crowds, fighters like
himself but mostly people who just came to see, women
and children. The Americans were firing down the streets
at everyone. Sheik Ali saw women and children fall.

He and several of the men in his band lay down behind
a tree and shot at the Americans as they came down the
slope toward the alley where the crashed helicopter was.
There he saw a Ranger shot in the head, one of the black
vests with the little helmets. His buddy tried to pull him to
safety and he, too, was shot, in the neck.

Then Sheik Ali and his men moved on. They circled
around the neighborhood where the helicopter was down,
and crept back down toward it on Marehan Road. Sheik Ali

found a tree and lay flat on his stomach behind it. There
were Americans on his side of the street about two blocks
south, hiding behind a car and a tree and a wall. There were
more at the same intersection across the street. Between
him and the Americans were more fighters, most of them
crazy people with guns who didn't know how to fight.
Sheik Ali waited behind his cover for a clean shot.

He was there for almost two hours, trading shots with
the Americans, before his companion, Abdikadir Ali Nur,
was shot. An American down the street behind an M-60 hit
Nur with several shots that nearly tore off the left half of
his body. Sheik Ali himself was hit by some shrapnel in the
face when an M-203 round exploded nearby.

He then helped carry his friend to a hospital.

13

The odor of spent gunpowder had always been sweet
for Private David Floyd. It reminded him of home. Out
hunting with his father as a boy in South Carolina -which
was not that long ago; he was just nineteen - he would pick
up shotgun shells just to sniff them.

Now that odor, which was all around, meant something
else. He ran with the others through the gunfire on the
street, rounded the corner just behind a team of D-boys,
and then jumped for whatever cover he could find on the
left side of the street. He tucked himself into a corner by
some roofing tin, facing south, disbelieving.

It had been an effort to keep moving. There was a big
part of Floyd that just wanted to crawl into a little ball and
hide somewhere. He knew it would be suicide to stop
fighting, but he was that scared. He was scared enough to
piss his pants. I'm in it now. It was like a movie only it was
real and he was in the middle. He couldn't believe he was
in actual combat and people were shooting at him, trying to
kill him. I'm gonna die on this dirty little street in Africa. It
was much too frantic a moment to be thinking about such
things but it occurred to Floyd anyway, a sudden image in

his mind's eye of a late summer Sunday morning at home
with his parents sitting down to breakfast without the
slightest notion that their precious son David was here, a
million miles away, fighting for his life in this insane city
they'd never even heard of, much less cared about. What in
the hell am l doing here? The D-boys' presence helped
keep those impulses under control. They encouraged the
opposite impulse, that was there, too, which was to fight
like hell, use every round and grenade and rocket at hand,
use all the training he'd been given to inflict as much
punishment as possible. Because it made him mad. To see
one of his Ranger brothers shot down right beside him - he
had seen Williamson go down, screaming - it just... well, it
pis sed Floyd off. So warring with the urge to crawl under a
rock was this fury, this cornered-animal rage, like, you
motherfuckers asked for it now you're gonna get it.

Then he saw Fillmore get hit. This was not supposed to
happen. These guys knew how to stay alive. Ho-oly shit. If
the D-boys were getting killed, what odds would you give
Private First Class David Floyd for coming out of this
alive?

He was against the west wall firing his weapon south
pretty rapidly now down Marehan Road and realizing that
the pile of tin around him was no real shelter at all. In the
middle of the street, right in the middle, Specialist John
Collett had crawled behind a hump in the road and was
providing superb covering fire to the south with his SAW.
Across the street was Sergeant Watson with a group of
other Rangers.

Watson led the group with his own grim sense of
humor. When a barrage of bullets slammed into a wall
directly over his head, Watson turned to the men with his
eyes open comically wide. 'Oh, this sucks!' he said, in a
way that made the others smile. His attitude was, we're-in-
the-shit-now-but-what-the-fuck!

Sergeant Keni Thomas was closest to Fillmore when he
got hit.

'Can you call for a medevac?' shouted Hooten.

Thomas ran back to Watson, who only heard the last

part of what Thomas said. Watson knew there was no way
they were going to be able to get Fillmore out, but he didn't
have the heart to tell Thomas.

'Go ahead and ask the captain,' he said.

So Thomas ran as far as he could in Steele's direction,
then shouted, 'We've got a head wound. We have to get him
out!'

Steele gestured for Thomas to wait a second as he
talked on the radio. Then he called back, 'Is he one of
ours?'

Weren't they all one of ours?

'A Delta guy,’ Thomas shouted.

Thomas was distressed. He’d never seen a man shot in
the head.

'Just calm down,' said Watson when Thomas returned.
The sergeant said maybe they could get him on a vehicle.
Where the hell were those vehicles anyway? When they
left for the crash site, the convoy had been on the street
right behind them.

Thomas ran back to Hooten.

'We can't land a bird in here,' Thomas said, 'but maybe
we can get a Humvee.’

'It's all right,' said Hooten. 'He's dead.'

Thomas felt oddly emotionless about it. He felt angry at
Captain Steele for asking, 'Is he one of ours?' He also felt
like a failure.

Collett was feeling good about his spot at the center of
Marehan Road. It didn't look like much. Guys on both sides
of the street thought he was crazy. But Collett had deduced
by the rounds cracking over his head that the hump was
excellent cover. It looked to him as if it was the guys who
were up and moving who were getting shot. He had good
angles, but there was only room for one man. When Private
George Siegler started crawling out toward him, Collett
shouted, 'Siegler, get back over there!' Siegler didn't argue.
He just scooted around and crawled back to the wall.

Rounds poked through Floyd's tin shelter. Because the
sun was low in the sky, when he heard the popping noise
he saw shafts of light suddenly appear through the metal. It

was like somebody was shooting at him with a laser. Then
he saw Private Peter Neathery get hit across the street
against the same wall where Fillmore had been shot.
Neathery had been down on the ground working his M-60
machine gun when he screamed and rolled away clutching
his right arm. Private Vince Errico took over the big gun,
and seconds later let out a yelp. He, too, had been hit in the
right arm. Both Neathery and Errico were now down,
moaning. It was clear that the right side of the wall
approaching the intersection, the place where Fillmore had
been killed and where all these other men were being hit,
was like a focal point for enemy fire. Walking through it
was asking to be shot.

The bullet that hit Neathery had torn through his bicep.
There was a lot of blood. Doc Richard Strous calmly
examined it as Neathery looked up at Thomas.

'Damn, Sergeant, I hope they send me home for this.'

'Does it hurt?' Thomas asked.

'Hell yeah! I’m all right, though. I do believe in God.'

'That's okay,' said Thomas. 'He believes in you, too.'

Thomas took over the M-60. He was squinting west,
desperately looking for the shooter who had such a bead on
them. Floyd and Specialist Melvin Dejesus were doing the
same from their low vantage point in the shade. Floyd was
feeling hopeless. We're gonna buy it here. Then a single
brass cartridge plopped on the street right in front of them.
It had to have rolled off the tin roof of the house they were
up against. Whoever was up there would have a clear shot
at the men along the sunny east wall. Floyd stood. He
wasn't tall enough to see up on the roof, but he could reach
it with his SAW. He placed the gun roughly parallel to the
rooftop and squeezed a long burst. He heard a loud
thumping and a shout. The shooting from that direction
stopped.

Someone else was shooting from a courtyard to the
south. Thomas had used up all the 60 ammo that was left,
and he'd already tossed a grenade in that courtyard, and
Floyd and Dejesus sprayed rounds toward it to no effect.
They could see big muzzle flashes splash out from behind a

low masonry wall backed with bushes.

’Use the LAW!' Floyd shouted.

Thomas had one of the disposable rocket launchers
strapped to his back, but it was so lightweight and rarely
used it was easy to forget about it.

He looked back at Floyd quizzically.

The LAW! The LAW! On your back!' Floyd gestured to
his shoulder.

Thomas's eyebrows went up theatrically, as if to say,
Oh yeah!

He unstrapped the rube, extended it, and flipped up the
sight. The rocket turned the courtyard into a ball of fire.
Sergeant Watson saw Thomas exulting over the shot, the
same man who had been so upset about Fillmore minutes
before. He solved his problem. It was inspiring for Watson
to see how determined and resilient men could be.

* * *

Specialist Mike Kurth was helping to bandage Errico
when he saw a grenade drop and roll out past him. Its
smoke trail first caught his eye, then he saw the pineapple
shape on the ground, right next to the hump in the road
hiding Collett.

’GRENADE!' sounded several voices together.

The men, Kurth, Errico, Neathery, and Doc Strous, all
flopped to the sand and rolled as fast as they could. Private
Jeff Young reached back to grab Strous and pull him away,
and the explosion ripped the medic from his hands.

When it blew, Kurth felt himself driven hard into the
ground and felt a flash of heat and light behind him. He
was in just the right spot. The force of the explosion passed
over him. He felt the shock and heat of it, and tasted its
bitter chemical ignition, but in the frantic instants after the
blast he moved his arms and legs and saw that he hadn't
been hurt. The rest of the guys could not have been so
lucky. Collett, for sure, was dead. Kurth sat up hesitantly,
before the smoke had cleared.

'Doc, you good?' he asked.

'Yeah.'

'Neathery?'

'Yeah.'

'Errico?'

'Yeah.'

'Young?'

'I’m okay.'

He waited to name Collett last.

'Yeah, dude. I’m okay,' his friend answered. The hump
in the road had directed the blast up and away from him.
Strous got some shrapnel in one leg and Young caught a
small piece in his boot, but otherwise everyone was intact.

Further down the slope on the sunny side of the street,
just beyond a tin shack that jutted out from one of the
houses, Captain Steele was still on the ground with his
second in command, Lechner, and Atwater, his radioman.
Sergeant Hooten was in the doorway to a courtyard about
ten feet to Steele's right. It looked like he was trying to get
the captain's attention.

Floyd saw the barrel of an M-16 protrude from behind
the corner down his side of the street, pointing at the two
Ranger officers.

14

What Hooten was trying to tell Steele was that he'd
chosen a bad place to stop. Fillmore and one of the other
operators had just been shot in that spot.

Steele motioned with his hand for Hooten to wait. He
was talking on the radio. He wondered where in the hell the
vehicles were. At the same time Steele's Rangers and the
Delta operators had been running through the streets
making their way to the first crash site, the ground convoy
was wandering lost and taking terrible casualties. But
Steele didn't know this. All he knew was that they had left
the target house at the same time. Steele and some of his
men had been pinned down now for about ten minutes. If
those vehicles would show up they could all roll out of this

mess. Beside Steele, Lechner and Atwater were working
out some fire support. They had trouble at first because the
signal from Atwater's UHF radio was being overridden by
the UHF emergency beacon from the downed Black Hawk
a block away. Lechner was finally able to get through to
one of the attack Little Birds on his FM radio. The pilot,
Chief Warrant Officer Hal Wade, told Lechner to put out
some big orange panels marking their positions. Lechner
passed the word.

Once the panels were placed on the road, Wade came
roaring down Marehan Road just above the low rooftops.
Collett ducked his helmet into his chest. Gunfire erupted
from all directions as the Little Bird flashed past, but the
helicopter didn't fire. Wade was braving the fire to make
sure he knew where his own forces were before shooting
back. His chopper flew up and swept into a turn and came
roaring back down the road again. There was another
rattling explosion of gunfire, but once again Wade didn't
shoot. He now had a pretty good fix on where his people
were on the ground. Wade's Little Bird made another
sweeping turn. This time when he came down his miniguns
were blazing.

It was just after that first shooting run that a bullet
sprayed sand into Steele's eye. Lechner turned left. He
thought the shot came from across the road, but Steele
rolled to his right and looked at the tin wall behind him.
The shot had rung so loud he was certain it had come from
there. His first thought was that one of the wounded
Rangers behind him was shooting through the wall. He
kept rolling away, which wasn't easy with the big radio
strapped to his back.

Then two more holes poked through the tin with loud
bangs and dirt flew and Lechner screamed.

He first felt a whipping sensation and then a crushing
blow, as if an anvil had fallen on the lower half of his leg.
The pain was unbearable. He gripped his upper leg and
looked down at a gaping hole in his leg. The bullet had
exploded his shinbone and traveled on down his leg and
exited at his ankle, shredding the foot beneath the hole.

There had been three rounds. Steele and Atwater had
reacted to the first by rolling away, but Lechner had not.
Steele was rolling when he heard Lechner scream. There
was more shooting. Hooten gesticulated wildly in the
doorway, waving Steele in. Atwater was between Lechner
and him and the doorway was close, so Steele got up and
ran for it. There was a lip around the base of the entrance
and he tripped over it. The big captain came sprawling into
the courtyard. Atwater came flying in after him.

Steele saw Atwater and shouted, ’We've got to get
Lechner!'

He stood to run back out but saw the howling
lieutenant, his leg a mess, being dragged toward the door
by Bullock, who had run out to the street to help.

Steele took the radio mike from Atwater. Shouting, his
words delivered in gasped phrases, his voice contrasted
sharply with the even, cool voices of the pilots and airborne
commanders, reflecting the drama on the ground.

- Romeo Six Four, this is Juliet Six Four. We're taking
heavy small arms fire. We need relief NOW and start
extracting.

Harrell responded evenly but with impatience.

- This is Romeo Six Four. I UNDERSTAND you need to
be extracted. I've done EVERYTHING I CAN to get those
vehicles to you. over.

Steele spoke wearily.

- Roger, understand. Be advised command element
[Lechner] was just hit. Have more casualties, over.

Sergeant Goodale, who had been pulled into the same
courtyard earlier after being shot through the thigh and
buttock, had heard Lechner howl. It was a horrible sound,
the worst sound he'd ever heard a man make. His own
wound, oddly, didn't hurt that bad. Lechner's looked
horrific. He was still screaming when they got him inside.
Goodale helped to pull the lieutenant's radio off. Minutes
before, after his injury, Goodale had radioed Lechner to tell
him he would be unable to continue calling in air support.
That's why Lechner had been calling Wade. Now here the
lieutenant was, screaming in agony, the upper part of his

right leg normal, but the bottom half from just below the
knee flopped grotesquely to one side. He was ghost white.
Goodale sickened more as he saw a widening pool form
under the leg. Blood flowed from Lechner's wound like it
was pouring from a jug.

15

At roughly the same time, one and a half miles
southwest, his helicopter pancaked into a squalid village of
cloth and tin huts, Black Hawk Super Six Four pilot Mike
Durant came to. There was something wrong with his right
leg. He and his copilot, Ray Frank, had been knocked cold
for at bast several minutes, they weren't sure how long.
Durant was upright, leaning slightly to the right. The
windshield was shattered and there was something draped
over him, a big sheet of tin. The Black Hawk seemed
remarkably intact. The rotor blades had not flexed off. His
seat, which was mounted on shock absorbers, had collapsed
down to the floor. It had broken in the full down position
and was cocked to the right. He figured that was because
they had been spinning when they hit. The shocks had
collapsed and the spin jerked the seat to the right. It must
have been the combination of the jerk and the impact that
had broken his femur. The big bone in his right leg had
snapped on the edge of his seat.

The Black Hawk had flattened a flimsy hut. No one had
been inside, but in the hut alongside a two -year-old girl,
Howa Hassan, lay unconscious and bleeding. A hunk of
flying metal from the helicopter had taken a deep gouge out
of her forehead. Her mother, Bint Abraham Hassan, had
been splashed with something hot, probably oil, and was
severely burned on her face and legs.

The dazed pilots checked themselves over. Frank's left
tibia was broken.

Durant did some things he later could not explain. He
removed his helmet and his gloves. Then he took off his
watch. Before flying he always took off his wedding ring

because there was a danger it could catch on rivets or
switches. He would pass the strap of his watch through the
ring and keep it there during a flight. Now he removed the
watch and took the ring off the strap and set both on the
dashboard.

He picked up his weapon, an MP-5K, a little German 9
mm submachine gun. The pilots called them SPs, or
Skinny-poppers.

Frank tried to explain what happened during the crash.

'I couldn't get them all the way off,' he said, explaining
his struggle to reach up and pull the power control levers
back as they fell. Frank said he had reinjured his back. He
had hurt it first in the crash years before. Durant's back
hurt, too. They both figured they had crushed vertebrae. All
this happened in the first moments after they came to.

Durant realized that with his leg and back broken, he
would be unable to pull himself out of the chopper. He
pushed the piece of tin roof away from him and resolved to
defend his position through the broken windshield. They
looked like they were in some little opening, a yard
between huts. There was a hut facing him pieced together
with irregularly shaped pieces of corrugated metal, and a
small dirt alleyway alongside it. To his side was another
flimsy wall pieced together like the house. Durant
remembers seeing Frank sitting in the doorway opposite,
about to push himself out. It was the last time he saw him.

That's when Shughart and Gordon showed up. Durant
was startled. They were suddenly standing there. He'd
either been out for a while or they'd come amazingly fast.
He didn't know either of the Delta operators well, but he
recognized their faces. Seeing them gave him an enormous
sense of relief. It was over. He figured they were part of a
rescue team. His next thought had been to get the radio up
and operating, but now, with his rescuers already on the
ground, there was no need. Shughart and Gordon were
calm. There was gunfire, mostly from the choppers
overhead. The D-boys reached in and lifted Durant out of
the craft gently, one lifting his legs and the other grabbing
his torso, as if they had all the time in the world, and set

him down on his side by a tree. He was not in great pain.
With the airframe and a wall joined behind him, and a wall
to his left that ran all the way back behind the tail of the
chopper, Durant was in a perfect position to cover the
whole right side of the aircraft.

He could see that his crew chiefs had taken the brunt of
the impact. There were no shock absorbers in back like the
ones he and Frank had up front. He watched the operators
lift Bill Cleveland from the fuselage. Cleveland had blood
all over his pants and was talking but making no sense.

Then the D-boys moved to the other side of the
helicopter to help Field. Durant couldn't see feet moving
under the fuselage because the landing gear had been
crushed on impact. The belly of the bird was on the dirt. He
assumed they were setting up a perimeter over there,
looking for a way to get them out, maybe looking for a
place where another helicopter could set down and load
them up. Skinnies were starting to poke their heads around
the corner on Durant's side of the chopper. Just an
occasional one or two. He'd squeeze off a round and they'd
drop back behind cover. His gun kept jamming so he'd
eject the round and the next time it would shoot okay. Then
it would jam again. He could hear more and more shooting
now from the other side of the airframe. It still hadn't
occurred to him these two D-boys were it, and that there
was no rescue team.

16

When Mo’alim got to the neighborhood where the
second helicopter had crashed, the paths leading toward it
were already littered with bodies. There were choppers
shooting from above and, as Mo’alim had expected, there
were still Americans around the crash capable of fighting.

There was only one direct approach, and Mo'alim could
tell it was covered. He kept trying to hold the crowd back
but they were angry and brazen. The slender, bearded
militia leader squatted behind a wall and waited for more of

his men to catch up so that they could mount a coordinated
attack.

17

On each of his passes over the wreck, Mike Goffena in
Super Six Two found the encircling mob larger. Shughart
and Gordon had arrayed themselves and the chopper crew
in a perimeter around the downed bird. Clearly, they had
decided against trying to move the crew to open ground.
They were dug in awaiting help. On the radio Goffena
could hear the desperate problems the rescue convoys were
having.

The ticking of bullets puncturing his airframe had
accelerated, and he was flying through regular RPG
airbursts. With two Black Hawks down already, his fellow
pilots were warning him away.

- Just had an airburst about two hundred meters behind
ya.

- RPG passed right under. Super Six Two.

But Goffena was absorbed with the drama unfolding
below, and trying to get something done about it.

’This place is getting extremely hot,' he pleaded on the
radio. ’We need to get those folks out of there!'

- Roger, Six Two, can you tell what the situation is?
'Taking fairly regular RPG fire and they're all close.'
Goffena continued to direct support fire from the

smaller attack helicopters, pointing them where the
Somali mobs were thickest. Air commander Matthews
didn't like what he was seeing from the C2 Black Hawk.
RPG smoke trails were arcing up regularly now from the
crowd pressing in around Durant's crash site. He had Little
Bird pilots hovering over the scene, with copilots trying to
pick off targets with M-16s.

- Knock that shit off, he said. You're going to get
yourselves shot down.

The battle was at its most confusing point. There were
now two crash sites. A rescue team had made it to the first,

Cliff Wolcott's, and the entire assault force and original
ground convoy had been directed to move there. A second
hastily assembled rescue convoy had left the Ranger base
and not gotten far. They were probing around the vicinity
of this crash site, but not getting close. The first crash site
had a fighting chance, but Durant's, even with the two D-
boys they'd dropped in, wouldn't last long without more
help.

Goffena flew a low orbit over Durant's downed Black
Hawk. Every time he swung west he was blinded by the
sun. He wished it would hurry and set. He and the other
Night Stalkers felt most comfortable flying at night. In the
darkness, with their technology, the chopper pilots and
crew could see while the enemy could not. If Goffena's
Black Hawk and the Little Birds could hold off the mob
until nightfall, the men on the ground had a chance.

The mob below now filled all the footpaths back out to
the main road. Every time Goffena made a low pass some
of the crowd would scatter, but it would close back up
behind him. It was like running his hand through water. He
could see RPGs now flying past his helicopter very plainly.
He saw one of the D-boys get shot.

'This is Six Two , ' he radioed. ’Ground element crash site
number two has no security right now. They have one guy
on the ground.'

Then, moments later, another plea.

'Are there any ground forces moving to crash site two at
this time?' Goffena asked.

- Negative, not at this time.

On one of his turns back into the slowly setting sun
Goffena's helicopter collided with what felt like a freight
train. A resounding crash. It felt like the sky had caved. He
had been banking in a steep turn to the right, about thirty
feet off the rooftops, going about 110 knots, and the next
thing he knew the airframe was perfectly level. He saw in
front of him what looked like a big piece of a rotor blade,
but when his eyes focused he saw it was a crack in his
windshield. He wasn't sure for a moment if he was still
flying or on the ground. All the screens in his cockpit were

blank. There was a beat of silence. Then he heard all the
shrieks and beeps of the chopper's alarm systems gradually
sounding louder and louder, like somebody was slowly
turning up the volume (he realized later that the initial RPG
blast had deafened him, and that it wasn't the volume
turning up, it was the gradual recovery of his hearing). The
alarms were telling him that his engines were dead and that
his rotors had stopped... but it felt like they were still
flying.

Goffena realized he had been hit by an RPG on the right
side. He couldn't tell if it had been in front or in back. He
didn't know if he had anybody left in back (his crew chiefs,
Sergeants Paul Shannon and Mason Hall, had not been hurt
by this blast, but Sergeant Brad Hallings, the Delta sniper,
had his leg almost completely shorn off and was riddled
with shrapnel). Captain Yacone, Goffena's copilot, hung
limp in his seat, head slumped straight down. He didn't
know if Yacone was dead or just injured. They were
definitely still flying, and Goffena was alert enough to
realize that this was a crash sequence. He had practiced this
in simulators. They were aloft but going down fast.

He saw a street below, an alley, really. If he could keep
the bird heading toward that alley they might be able to
slide down into it. It was so narrow it would shear off the
rotors but they might impact upright, which was the key.
Keep it upright. He saw hard buildings to the left and the
street was fairly wide but there was a row of poles on the
right and he wasn't going to clear the poles . . . maybe only
the right rotor system would impact and maybe it would
just shear the rotors. Goffena saw the poles out the right
side window and he was just twenty feet over them when
Yacone came back to life and shouted into the radio that
they were going down and gave grid coordinates. As they
cushioned themselves for impact, Goffena began
instinctively pulling back on his control stick trying to keep
the nose of the bird up, and he realized suddenly that the
helicopter was responding! It wasn't dead! The controls
weren't working properly but he did have some pitch
control, enough to keep it in the air. They flew right on

over and past the alley and the poles. Goffena held the nose
of the bird up and it continued flying. He had no idea how
long they would stay up. Were the engines unwinding?
How long would his controls hold out? But the bird stayed
fairly level, and the power stayed on. The road beneath
them abruptly ended and what opened in front of him in the
distance was what Goffena recognized as the new port
facility, friendly ground! The helicopter was slowing and
he was now in a gradual descent. He crossed low over the
fence around the port and aimed the bird down. They
touched ground at about fifteen knots and Goffena was
about to congratulate himself on a perfect landing when the
bird, instead of rolling to a stop, just keeled over to the
right, crunching metal on sand. The right main landing
wheels had been blown off. The chopper skidded and
Goffena worried they would flip, but instead it just came to
a stop and he shut everything down.

As he climbed out of the cockpit to check on the fate of
the men in back he saw the familiar shape of a Humvee
racing toward them.

18

Mike Durant still thought things were under control.
His leg was broken but it didn't hurt. He was lying on his
back, propped against a supply kit by a small tree, using his
weapon to keep back the occasional Skinnie who poked his
head into the clearing. There was just about a fifteen-foot
space between the wall to his left and the tail of the
chopper. Durant admired the way the Delta guy had
positioned him.

He could hear firing over on the other side of the
helicopter. He knew Ray Frank, his copilot, was hurt but
alive. And there were the two D-boys and his crew chief,
Tommy Field. He wondered if Tommy was okay. He
figured there were at least four men on the other side of the
bird and probably more from the rescue team. It was only a
matter of time before the vehicles showed up to take them

out.

Then he heard one of the operators - it was Gary
Gordon - cry out that he was hit. Just a quick shout of anger
and pain. He didn't hear the voice again.

The other one - it was Randy Shughart - came back to
Durant's side of the bird.

'Are there weapons on board?' he asked.

There were. The crew chiefs carried M-16s. Durant told
him where they were kept, and Shughart stepped into the
craft and rummaged around and returned with both. He
handed Durant Gordon's weapon, a CAR-15 loaded and
ready to fire.

'What's the support frequency on the survival radio?'
Shughart asked.

It was then, for the first time, that it dawned on Durant
that they were stranded. The pilot felt a twist of alarm in
his gut. If Shughart was asking how to set up
communications, it meant he and the other guy had come in
on their own. They were the rescue team. And Gordon had
just been shot!

He explained standard procedure on the survival radio
to Shughart. There was a channel Bravo. He listened while
Shughart called out.

’We need some help down here,’ Randy said.

He was told that a reaction force was en route. Then
Shughart wished him luck, took the weapons, and moved
back around to the other side of the helicopter.

Durant felt panicked now. He had to keep the Skinnies
away. He could hear them talking behind the wall, so he
fired his weapon into the tin. It startled him because he had
been firing single shots, but this new weapon was set on
burst. The voices behind the wall stopped. Then two
Somalis tried to climb over the nose end of the chopper. He
fired at them and they jumped back. He didn't know if he
had hit them or not.

A man tried to climb over the wall and Durant shot him.
Another came crawling from around the corner with a
weapon and Durant shot him.

Then there came a mad fusillade on the other side of the

helicopter that lasted for about two minutes. Over the din
he heard Shughart cry out in pain. Then it stopped.

Overhead, worried commanders were watching.

- Do you have video over crash site number two?

- Indigenous personnel moving around all over the
crash site.

- Indigenous ?

- That's affirmative, over. The radio fell silent.

Terror washed over Durant. He heard the sounds of an
angry mob. The crash had left the clearing littered with
debris and he heard a great shuffling sound as the mob
pushed it away like some onrushing beast. There was no
more shooting. The others must be dead.

Durant knew what angry Somali mobs could do,
gruesome, horrible things. That was now in store for him.
His second weapon was empty. He still had a pistol
strapped to his side but he never even thought to reach for
it.

Why bother? It was over. He was done.

A man stepped around the nose of the plane. He seemed
startled to find Durant. The man shouted and more Skinnies
came racing around. It was time to die. Durant placed the
empty weapon across his chest, folded his hands over it,
and just turned his eyes to the sky.

19

Hassan Yassin Abokoi had been shot in the ankle by a
helicopter as he stood with the crowd around the crashed
helicopter. He now sat beneath a tree watching. His ankle
stung at first and then had gone numb. It was bleeding
badly. He hated the helicopters. His uncle that day had his
head blown off by a cannon shot from a helicopter. It
removed his head neatly from his shoulders, like it had
never been there. Who were these Americans who rained
fire and death on them, who came to feed them but then
had started killing? He wanted to kill these men who had
fallen from the sky, but he couldn't stand.

From where he sat, Abokoi could see the mob descend
on the Americans. Only one was still alive. He was
shouting and waving his arms as the mob grabbed him by
the legs and began pulling him away from the helicopter,
tearing at his clothes. He saw his neighbors hack at the
bodies of the Americans with knives and begin to pull at
their limbs. Then he saw people running and parading with
parts of the Americans' bodies.

When Mo'alim ran around the tail of the helicopter he
was surprised to find another American, a pilot. The man
did not shoot. He set his weapon on his chest and folded his
hands over it. The crowd surged past Mo'alim toward him
and began kicking and beating him, but the bearded fighter
felt suddenly protective. He grabbed the pilot's arm and
fired his weapon in the air and shouted for the crowd to
stay back.

One of his men struck the pilot hard in the face with his
rifle butt, and Mo'alim pushed him back. The pilot was
injured and could not fight anymore. The Rangers had
spent months capturing Somalis and holding them prisoner.
They would be willing to trade them, perhaps all of them,
for one of their own. The pilot was more valuable alive
than dead. He directed his men to form a ring around the
pilot to protect him from the mob, which was hungry for
revenge. Several of Mo'alim’s men stooped and began
tearing Durant's clothing away. The pilot had a pistol
strapped to his side, and a knife, and they were afraid he
had other hidden weapons and they knew the American
pilots wore beacons in their clothing so that the helicopters
could track them, so they stripped the layers away.

20

Durant kept his eyes on the sky as the mob closed over
him. They were screaming things he couldn't understand.
When the man struck him in the face with a rifle butt it
broke his nose and shattered the bone around his eye.
People pulled at his arms and legs, and then others began

tearing at his clothes. They were unfamiliar with the plastic
snaps of his gear, so Durant reached down and squeezed
them open. He gave himself over to them. His boots were
yanked off, his survival vest, and his shirt. A man half
unzipped his pants, but when he saw that Durant wore no
underwear (for comfort in the equatorial heat) he zipped
the trousers back up. They also left on his brown T-shirt.
All the while he was being kicked and hit. A young man
leaned down and grabbed at the green ID card Durant wore
around his neck. He stuck it in Durant's face and shouted,
'Ranger, Ranger, you die Somalia!'

Then someone threw a handful of dirt in his face, which
went into his mouth. They tied a rag or towel over the top
of his head and eyes, and the mob hoisted him up in the air,
partly carrying and partly dragging him. He felt the broken
end of his femur pierce the skin in the back of his leg and
poke through. He was buffeted from all sides, kicked, hit
with fists, rifle butts. He could not see where they were
taking him. He was engulfed in a great wave of hate and
anger. Someone, he thought a woman, reached out and
grabbed his penis and testicles and yanked at them.

And in this agony of fright suddenly Durant left his
body. He was no longer at the center of the crowd, he was
in it, or above it, perhaps. He was observing the crowd
attacking him. Apart somehow. And he felt no pain and the
fear lessened and then he passed out.

THE ALAMO

Where the troops are

i. Search fr rescue troops,
the earlu Ranger arrivals,
mundea Black Hawk crew
s' and most of Chalk Two

s'

ffs- First Lt.Perino,
■* Spec. Smith

ra

\ m S?t. Howe's

Delta ground
\ commander
Capt. Miller

^ \\ ■¥ Sgt. Hooten's

1

Air force parajumper Tim Wilkinson climbed back into
the wrecked helicopter looking for a way to get more
leverage to free pilot Cliff Wolcott's body. Maybe there
was some way he hadn't seen at first to pull the seat back
and get more room and a better angle. But it was hopeless.

He climbed back out. Kneeling on top of the wreck in
the shattering din of automatic weapons fire, he peered
down through the open right side doors into the rear of the
aircraft. He thought they had accounted for everyone on
board. He knew some of the men had been rescued earlier
by the Little Bird that landed right after the crash. So
Wilkinson was looking for sensitive equipment or weapons
that would have to be removed or destroyed. PJs are trained
to quickly erase the memory banks of any electronic
equipment with sensitive data. All of the avionics
equipment and every piece of gear that hadn't been
strapped down had come to rest at the left side of the
aircraft, which was now the bottom.

In the heap he noticed a scrap of desert fatigues.

’I think there's somebody else in there,' he told Sergeant
Bob Mabry, a Delta medic on the CSAR crew.

Wilkinson leaned in further and saw an arm and a flight
glove. He called down into the wreck and a finger of the
flight glove moved. Wilkinson climbed back into the
wreckage and began pulling the debris and equipment off
of the man buried there. It was the second crew chief, the
left side gunner, Ray Dowdy. Part of his seat had gotten
slammed and broken off the hinges but it was still basically
intact and in place. When Wilkinson freed Dowdy's arm
from under the pile, the crew chief began shoving things
away. He still hadn't spoken and was only half conscious.

Mabry slithered down under the wreck and tried
without success to crawl in through the bottom left side
doorway. He gave up and climbed in through the upper
doors just as Wilkinson freed Dowdy. The three men stood
inside the wreck as a storm of bullets suddenly poked

through the skin of the craft. Mabry and Wilkinson danced
involuntarily at the sharp burst of snapping and crashing
noises. Bits of metal, plastic, paper, and fabric flew around
them like a sudden snow squall. Then it stopped. Wilkinson
remembers noting, first, that he was still alive. Then he
checked himself. He'd been hit in the face and arm. It felt
like he'd been slapped or punched in the chin. Everyone
had been hit. Mabry had been hit in the hand. Dowdy had
lost the tips of two fingers.

The crew chief stared blankly at his bloody hand.

Wilkinson put his hand over the bleeding fingertips and
said, 'Okay, let's get out of here!'

Mabry tore up the Kevlar floor panels and propped
them up over the side of the craft where the bullets had
burst through. Instead of braving the fire above, they
tunneled out, digging through the dry sand at the rear
corner of the left side door. They slid Dowdy out that way.

Then the two rescuers climbed back inside, Wilkinson
looking for equipment to destroy, Mabry handing out
Kevlar panels to be placed around the tail of the aircraft
where they had established a casualty collection point. Fire
was coming mostly up and down the alley. They were still
expecting the arrival of the ground convoy at any moment.

Wounded Sergeant Fales was too busy shooting to take
notice of the Kevlar pads. He had a pressure dressing on his
calf and an IV tube in his arm and he was lying out by the
broken tail boom looking for targets.

Wilkinson poked his head out the top. 'Scott, why don’t
you get behind the Kevlar?'

Fales looked startled. He had been so absorbed firing he
hadn't seen the panels go up behind him.

'Good idea,' he said.

Bullet hole after bullet hole poked through the broken
tail boom.

Wilkinson was reminded of the Steve Martin movie The
Jerk, where Martin's moronic character, unaware that
villains are shooting at him, watches with surprise as bullet
holes begin popping open a row of oil cans. He shouted
Martin's line from the movie.

’They hate the cans! Stay away from the cans!'

Both men laughed.

After patching up a few more men, Wilkinson crawled
back up into the cockpit from underneath, to see if there
was some way of pulling Wolcott's body down and out.
There wasn't.

2

A grenade came from somewhere. It was one of those
Russian types that looked like a soup can on the end of a
stick. It bounced off the car and then off Specialist Jason
Coleman's helmet and radio and then it hit the ground.

Nelson, who was still deaf from Twombly's timely
machine-gun blast, pulled his M-60 from the roof of the car
and dove, as did the men on both sides of the intersection.
They stayed down for almost a full minute, cushioning
themselves from the blast. Nothing happened.

'I guess it's a dud,' said Lieutenant DiTomasso.

Thirty seconds later another grenade rolled out into the
open space between the car and the tree across the street.
Nelson again grabbed the gun off the car and rolled with it
away from the grenade. Everyone braced themselves once
more, and this, too, failed to explode. Nelson thought they
had spent all their luck. He and Barton were crawling back
toward the car when a third grenade dropped between
them. Nelson turned his helmet toward it and pushed his
gun in front of him, shielding himself from the blast that
this time was sure to come. He opened his mouth, closed
his eyes, and breathed out hard in anticipation. The grenade
sizzled. He stayed like that for a full twenty seconds before
he looked up at Barton.

'Dud,' Barton said.

Yurek grabbed it and threw it into the street.

Someone had bought themselves a batch of bad
grenades. Wilkinson later found three or four more
unexploded ones inside the body of the helicopter.

The American forces around Wolcott's downed Black

Hawk were now scattered along an Lshaped perimeter
stretching south. One group of about thirty men was
massed around the wreck in the alleyway, at the northern
base of the ’L.’ When they learned that the ground convoy
had gotten lost and delayed, they began moving the
wounded through the hole made by the falling helicopter
into the house of Abdiaziz Ali Aden (he was still hidden in
a back room). Immediately west of the alley (at the bend of
the 'L') was Marehan Road, where Nelson, Yurek, Barton,
and Twombly were dug in across the street at the northwest
corner. On the east side of that intersection, nearest the
chopper, were DiTomasso, Coleman, Belman, and Delta
Captain Bill Coultrop and his radio operator. The rest of
the ground force was stretched out south on Marehan Road,
along the stem of the 'L,' which sloped uphill. Steele and a
dozen or so Rangers, along with three Delta teams, about
thirty men in all, were together in a courtyard on the east
side of Marehan Road midway up the next block south,
separated from the bulk of the force by half a block, a wide
alley, and a long block. Sergeant Howe's Delta team, with a
group of Rangers that included Specialist Stebbins,
followed by the Delta command group led by Captain
Miller, had crossed the wide alley and was moving down
the west wall toward Nelson’s position. Lieutenant Perino
had also crossed the alley and was moving downhill along
the east wall with Corporal Smith, Sergeant Chuck Elliot,
and several other men.

As Howe approached Nelson's position, it looked to
him as though the Rangers were just hiding. Two of his
men ran across the alley to tell the Rangers to start
shooting. Nelson and the others were still recovering from
the shock of the unexploded grenades. Rounds were taking
chips off the walls all around them, but it was hard to see
where the shots were coming from. Howe's team members
helped arrange Nelson and the others to set up effective
fields of fire, and placed Stebbins and machine-gunner
Private Brian Heard at the southern corner of the same
intersection, orienting them to fire west.

Captain Miller caught up with Howe, trailing his

radioman and some other members of his element, along
with Staff Sergeant Jeff Bray, an air force combat
controller. With all the shooting at that intersection, Howe
decided it was time to get off the street. There was a metal
gate at the entrance to a courtyard between two buildings
on his side of the block. He pushed against the gate, which
had two doors that opened inward. Howe considered
putting a charge on the door, but given the number of
soldiers nearby and the lack of cover, the explosion would
probably hurt people. So the burly sergeant and Bray began
hurling themselves against the gate. Bray's side gave way.

'Follow me in case I get shot,’ Howe said.

He plunged into the courtyard and rapidly moved
through the house on either side, running from room to
room. Howe was looking for people, focusing his eyes at
midtorso first, checking hands. The hands told you the
whole story. The only hands he found were empty. They
belonged to a man and woman and some children, a family
of about seven, clearly terrified. He stood in the doorway
with his weapon in his right hand pointing at them, trying
to coax them out of the room with his left hand. It took a
while, but they came out slowly, clinging to each other.
The family was flex-cuffed and herded into a small side
room.

Howe then more carefully inspected the space. Each of
the blocks in this neighborhood of Mogadishu consisted of
mostly one-story stone houses grouped irregularly around
open spaces, or courtyards. This block consisted of a short
courtyard, about two car-lengths wide, where he now
stood. There was a two-story house on the south side and a
one-story house on the north. Howe figured this space was
about the safest spot around. The taller building would
shelter them from both bullets and lobbed RPGs. At the
west end was some kind of storage shack. Howe began
exploring systematically, making a more thorough sweep,
moving from room to room, looking for windows that
would give them a good vantage for shooting west down
the alley. He found several but none that offered a
particularly good angle. The alley to the north (the same

one that the helicopter had crashed into one block west)
was too narrow. He could only see about fifteen yards
down in either direction, and all he saw was wall. When he
returned to the courtyard, Captain Miller and the others had
begun herding casualties into the space. It would serve as
their command post and casualty collection point for the
rest of the night.

As he re-entered the courtyard, one of the master
sergeants with Miller told Howe to go back out to the street
and help his team. Howe resented the order. He felt he was,
at this point, the de facto leader on the ground, the one
doing all the real thinking and moving and fighting. They
had reached a temporary safe point, a time for commanders
to catch their breath and think. They were in a bad spot, but
not critical. The next step would be to look for ways to
strongpoint their position, expand their perimeter, identify
other buildings to take down to give them better lines of
fire. The troop sergeant's command was the order of a man
who didn’t know what to do next.

Howe was built like a pro wrestler, but he was a
thinker. This sometimes troubled his relationship with
authority - especially the army's maddeningly arbitrary
manner of placing unseasoned, less-qualified men in
charge. Howe was just a sergeant first class with
supposedly narrower concerns, but he saw the big picture
very clearly, better than most. After being selected for
Delta he had met and married the daughter of Colonel
Charlie A. Beckwith, the founder and original commander
of Delta. They had met in a lounge by Fort Bragg and when
he told her that he was a civilian, Connie Beckwith, a
former army officer then herself, nodded knowingly.

'Look,' she said. 'I know who you work for so let's stop
pretending. My dad started that unit.'

She had to pull out her driver's license to prove who she
was.

Not that Howe had any ambition for formal army
leadership. His preferred relationship with officers was for
them to heed his advice and leave him alone. He was
frequently aghast at the failings of those in charge.

Take this setup in Mogadishu, for instance. It was
asinine. At the base, the huge hangar front doors wouldn't
close, so the Sammies had a clear view inside at all hours
of the day or night. The city sloped gradually up from the
waterfront, so any Somali with patience and binoculars
could keep an eye on their state of readiness. Every time
they scrambled to gear up and go, word was out in the city
before they were even on the helicopters. If that weren't
bad enough, you had the Italians, some of them openly
sympathetic to their former colonial subjects, who appeared
to be flashing signals with their headlights out into the city
whenever the helicopters took off. Nobody had the balls to
do anything about it.

Then there were the mortars. General Garrison seemed
to regard mortars as little more than an annoyance. He had
walked around casually during the early mortar attacks , his
cigar clenched in his teeth, amused by the way everyone
dove for cover. 'Piddly-assed mortars,' he'd said. Which
was all well and good, except, as Howe saw it, if the
Sammies ever got their act together and managed to drop a
few on the hangar, there'd be hell to pay. He wondered if
the tin roof was thick enough to detonate the round - which
would merely send shrapnel and shards of the metal roof
slashing down through the ranks - or whether the round
would just poke on through and detonate on the concrete
floor in the middle of everybody. It was a question that
lingered in his mind most nights as he went to sleep. Then
there were the flimsy perimeter defenses. At mealtimes, all
the men would be lined up outside the mess hall, which
was separated from a busy outside road by nothing more
than a thin metal wall. A car bomb along that wall at the
right time of day could kill dozens of soldiers.

Howe did not hide his disgust over these things. Now,
being ordered to do something pointless in the middle of
the biggest fight of his life, he was furious. He began
gathering up ammo, grenades, and LAWs off the wounded
Rangers in the courtyard. It seemed to Howe that most of
the men failed to grasp how desperate their situation had
become. It was a form of denial. They could not stop

thinking of themselves as the superior force, in command
of the situation, yet the tables had clearly turned. They
were surrounded and terribly outnumbered. The very idea
of adhering to rules of engagement at this point was
preposterous.

'You're throwing grenades?' the troop sergeant major
asked him, surprised when he saw Howe stuffing all of
them he could find into his vest pockets.

'We're not getting paid to bring them back,’ Howe told
him.

This was war. The game now was kill or be killed. He
stomped angrily out to the street and began looking for
Somalis to shoot.

He found one of the Rangers, Nelson, firing a handgun
at the window of the building Howe had just painstakingly
cleared and occupied. Nelson had seen someone moving in
the window, and they had been taking fire from just about
every direction, so he was pumping a few rounds that way.

'What are you doing?' Howe shouted across the alley.

Nelson couldn't hear Howe. He shouted back, 'I saw
someone in there.'

'No shit! There are friendlies in there!'

Nelson didn't find out until later what Howe had been
waving his arms about. When he did he was mortified. No
one had told him that Delta had moved into that space, but,
then again, it was a cardinal sin to shoot before identifying
a target.

Already furious, Howe began venting at the Rangers.
He felt they were not fighting hard enough. When he saw
Nelson, Yurek, and the others trying to selectively target
armed Somalis in a crowd at the other end of a building on
their side of the street, Howe threw a grenade over its roof.
It was an amazing toss, but the grenade failed to explode.
So Howe threw another, which exploded right where the
crowd was gathered. He then watched the Rangers try to hit
a gunman who kept darting out from behind a shed about
one block north, shooting, and then retreating back behind
it. The Delta sergeant flung one of his golf ball-sized
minigrenades over the Rangers' position. It exploded

behind the shed, and the gunman did not reappear. Howe
then picked up a LAW and hurled it across the road. It
landed on the arm of Specialist Lance Twombly, who was
lying on his belly four or five feet from the corner wall.
The LAW bruised his forearm. Twombly jumped to his
knees, angry, and turned to hear Howe bellowing, 'Shoot
the motherfucker!'

Down on one knee, Howe swore bitterly as he fired.
Everything about this situation was pissing him off, the
goddamn Somalis, his leaders, the idiot Rangers... even his
ammunition. He drew a bead on three Somalis who were
running across the street two blocks to the north, taking a
progressive lead on them the way he had learned through
countless hours of training, squaring them in his sights and
then aiming several feet in front of them. He would
squeeze two or three rounds, rapidly increasing his lead
with each shot. He was an expert marksman, and thought
he had hit them, but he couldn't tell for sure because they
kept running until they crossed the street and were out of
view. It bugged him. His weapon was the most
sophisticated infantry rifle in the world, a customized
CAR-15, and he was shooting the army's new 5.56 mm
green-tip round. The green tip had a tungsten carbide
penetrator at the tip, and would punch holes in metal, but
that very penetrating power meant his rounds were passing
right through his targets. When the Sammies were close
enough he could see when he hit them. Their shirts would
lift up at the point of impact, as if someone had pinched
and plucked up the fabric. But with the green-tip round it
was like sticking somebody with an ice pick. The bullet
made a small, clean hole, and unless it happened to hit the
heart or spine, it wasn't enough to stop a man in his tracks.
Howe felt like he had to hit a guy five or six times just to
get his attention. They used to kid Randy Shughart because
he shunned the modern rifle and ammunition and carried a
Vietnam era M-14, which shot a 7.62 mm round without
the penetrating qualities of the new green tip. It occurred to
Howe as he saw those Sammies keep on running that
Randy was the smartest soldier in the unit. His rifle may

have been heavier and comparatively awkward and
delivered a mean recoil, but it damn sure knocked a man
down with one bullet, and in combat, one shot was often all
you got. You shoot a guy, you want to see him go down;
you don't want to be guessing for the next five hours
whether you hit him, or whether he's still waiting for you in
the weeds.

Howe was in a good spot. There was nothing in front or
behind him that would stop a bullet, but there was a tree
about twenty feet south against the west wall of the street
that blocked any view of him from that direction. The
bigger tree across the alley where Nelson, Twombly, and
the others were positioned blocked any view of him from
the north. So the broad-beamed Delta sergeant could kneel
about five feet off the wall and pick off targets to the north
with impunity. It was like that in battle. Some spots were
safer than others. Up the hill, Hooten had watched Howe
and his team move across the intersection while he was
lying with his face pressed in the dirt, with rounds popping
all around him. How can they be doing that? he'd thought.
By an accident of visual angles, one person could stand and
fight without difficulty, while just a few feet away fire
could be so withering that there was nothing to do but dive
for cover and stay hidden. Howe recognized he'd found
such a safety zone. He shot methodically, saving his
ammunition.

When he saw Perino, Smith, and Elliot creeping down
to a similar position on the other side of the street, he
figured they were trying to do what he was doing. Except,
on that side of the street there were no trees to provide
concealment.

He shouted across at them impatiently, but in the din he
wasn't heard.

3

Perino and his men had moved down to a small tin
shed, a porch really, that protruded from the irregular gray
stone wall. They were only about ten yards from the alley
where Super Six One lay. A West Point graduate, class of
1990, Perino at twenty -four wasn't much older than the
Rangers he commanded. His group had gotten out ahead of
Captain Steele and most of the Ranger force. They had
pushed across the last intersection to the crash site after
Goodale had been hit. They had cleared the first courtyard
they passed on that block, and Perino had then led several
of the men back out in the street to press on down Marehan
Road. He knew they were close to linking up with
Lieutenant DiTomasso and the CSAR team, which had
been their destination when they started this move. The
shed was just a few steps downhill iom the courtyard
doorway.

Sergeant Elliot was already on the other side of the
shed. Corporal Smith was crouched behind it and Perino
was just a few feet behind Smith. They were taking so
much fire it was confusing. Rounds seemed to be coming
from everywhere. Stone chips sprayed from the wall over
Perino's head and rattled down on his helmet. He saw a
Somali with a gun on the opposite side of the street, about
twenty yards north of Nelson's position, blocked from those
guys' view by the tree they were hiding behind. Perino saw
the muzzle flash and could tell this was where some of the
incoming rounds originated. It would be hard to hit the guy
with a rifle shot, but Smith had a grenade launcher on his
M-16 and might be able to drop a 203 round near enough to
hurt the guy. He moved up to tap Smith on the shoulder -
there was too much noise to communicate other than face-
to-face - when bullets began popping loudly through the
shed. The lieutenant was on one knee and a round spat up
dirt between his legs.

Across the street, Nelson saw Smith get hit. The burly
corporal had moved down the street fast and had taken a

knee to begin shooting. Most of the men at that corner
heard the round hit him, a hard, ugly slap. Smith seemed
just startled at first. He rolled to his side and, like he was
commenting about someone else, remarked with surprise,
Tm hit!'

From where Nelson was, it didn't look like Smith was
hurt that badly. Perino helped move him against the wall.
Now Smith was screaming, 'I'm hit! I’m hit!'

The lieutenant could tell by the sound of Smith's voice
that he was in pain. When Goodale had been hit he seemed
to feel almost nothing, but the wound to Smith was
different. He was writhing. He was in a very bad way.
Perino pressed a field dressing into the wound but blood
spurted out forcefully around it.

’I’ve got a bleeder here!’ Perino shouted across the
street.

Delta medic Sergeant Kurt Schmid dashed toward them
across Marehan Road. Together, they dragged Smith back
into the courtyard.

Schmid tore off Smith's pants leg. When he removed
the battle dressing, bright red blood projected out of the
wound in a long pulsing spurt. This was bad.

The young soldier told Perino, 'Man, this really hurts.'

The lieutenant went back out to the street and crept
back up to Elliot.

'Where's Smith?' Elliot asked.

'He's down.'

'Shit,' said Elliot.

They saw Sergeant Ken Boom get hit in the foot. Then
Private Rodriguez rolled away from his machine gun,
bleeding, screaming, and holding his crotch. He felt no
pain, but when he had placed his hand on the wound his
genitals felt like mush and blood spurted thickly between
his fingers. He screamed in alarm. Eight of the eleven
Rangers in Perino's Chalk One had now been hit.

At the north end of the same block there was a huge
explosion and in it Stebbins went down. Nelson saw it from
up close. An RPG had streaked into the wall of the house
across the alley from him, over near where Stebbins and

Heard were positioned. The grenade went off with a
brilliant red flash and tore out a chunk of the wall about
four feet long. The concussion in the narrow alley was
huge. It hurt his ears. There was a big cloud of dust. He
saw - and Perino and Elliot saw from across the street -
both Stebbins and Heard flat on their backs. They're fucked
up, Nelson thought. But Stebbins stirred and then slowly
stood up, covered from head to foot in white dust,
coughing, rubbing his eyes.

'Get down, Stebbins!' shouted Heard. So he was okay,
too.

Bullets were hitting around Perino and Elliot with
increasing frequency. Rounds would come in long bursts,
snapping between them, over their heads, nicking the tin
shed with a high-pitched ring and popping right through the
metal. Rounds were kicking up dirt all over their side of the
street. It was a bad position, just as Howe had foreseen.

'Uh, sir, I think that it would be a pretty good idea if we
go into that courtyard,' said Elliot.

'Do you really think so?' Perino asked.

Elliot grabbed his arm and they both dove for the
courtyard where Schmid was working frantically to save
Smith.

Corporal Smith was alert and terrified and in sharp
pain. The medic had first tried applying direct pressure on
the wound, which had proved excruciatingly painful and
obviously ineffective. Bright red blood continued to gush
from the hole in Smith's leg. The medic tried jamming
Curlex into the hole. Then he checked Smith over.

'Are you hurt anywhere else?' he asked.

'I don't know.'

Schmid checked for an exit wound, and found none.

The medic was thirty-one. He’d grown up an army brat,
vowing never to join the military, and ended up enlisting a
year after graduating from high school. He'd gone into
Special Forces and elected to become a medic because he
figured it would give him good employment opportunity
when he left the army. He was good at it, and his training
kept progressing. By now he'd been schooled as thoroughly

as any physician's assistant, and better than some. As part
of his training he'd worked in the emergency room of a
hospital in San Diego, and had even done some minor
surgery under a physician's guidance. He certainly had
enough training to know that Jamie Smith was in trouble if
he couldn't stop the bleeding.

He could deduce the path the bullet had taken. It had
entered Smith's thigh and traveled up into his pelvis. A
gunshot wound to the pelvis is one of the worst. The aorta
splits low in the abdomen, forming the left and right iliac
arteries. As the iliac artery emerges from the pelvis it
branches into the exterior and deep femoral arteries, the
primary avenues for blood to the lower half of the body.
The bullet had clearly pierced one of the femoral vessels.
Schmid applied direct pressure to Smith's abdomen, right
above the pelvis where the artery splits. He explained what
he was doing. He'd already run two IVs into Smith's arm,
using 14-gauge, large bore needles, and was literally
squeezing the plastic bag to push replacement fluid into
him. Smith's blood formed an oily pool that shone dully on
the dirt floor of the courtyard.

The medic took comfort in the assumption that help
would arrive shortly. Another treatment tactic, a very risky
one, would be to begin directly transfusing Smith. Blood
transfusions were rarely done on the battlefield. It was a
tricky business. The medics carried IV fluids with them but
not blood. If he wanted to transfuse Smith, he'd have to
find someone with the same blood type and attempt a direct
transfusion. This was likely to create more problems. He
could begin reacting badly to the transfusion. Schmid
decided not to attempt it. The rescue convoy was supposed
to be arriving shortly. What this Ranger needed was a
doctor, pronto.

Perino radioed Captain Steele.

'We can't go any further, sir. We have more wounded
than I can carry.'

'You've got to push on,' Steele told him.

'We CANNOT go further,' Perino said. 'Request
permission to occupy a building.'

Steele told Perino to keep trying. Actually, inside the
courtyard they were only about fifty feet from Lieutenant
DiTomasso and the CSAR force, but Perino had no way of
knowing that. He tried to reach DiTomasso on his radio.

Tom, where are you?'

DiTomasso tried to explain their position, pointing out
landmarks.

'I can't see,' said Perino. 'I’m in a courtyard.'

DiTomasso popped a red smoke grenade, and Perino
saw the red plume drifting up in the darkening sky. He
guessed from the drift of the plume that they were about
fifty yards apart, which in this killing zone was a great
distance. On the radio, Steele kept pushing him to link up
with DiTomasso.

'They need your help,' he said.

'Look, sir, I've got three guys left, counting myself.
How can I help him?'

Finally, Steele relented.

'Roger, strongpoint the building and defend it.'

Schmid was still working frantically on Smith's wound.
He'd asked Perino to help him by applying pressure just
over the wound so he could use his hands. Perino pushed
two fingers directly into the wound up to his knuckles.
Smith screamed and blood shot out at the lieutenant, who
swallowed hard and applied more pressure. He felt dizzy.
The spurts of blood continued.

'Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!' Smith
shouted. He knew he had an arterial bleed.

The medic talked to him, tried to calm him down. The
only way to stop the bleeding was to find the severed
femoral artery and clamp it. Otherwise it was like trying to
stanch a fire hose by pushing down on it through a
mattress. He told Smith to lean back.

'This is going to be very painful,' Schmid told the
Ranger apologetically. 'I'm going to have to cause you
more pain, but I have to do this to help you.'

'Give me some morphine for the pain!' Smith
demanded. He was still very alert and engaged.

'I can't,' Schmid told him. In this state, morphine could

kill him. After losing so much blood, his pressure was
precariously low. Morphine would further lower his heart
rate and slow his respiration, exactly what he did not need.

The young Ranger bellowed as the medic reached with
both hands and tore open the entrance wound. Schmid tried
to shut out the fact that there were live nerve endings
beneath his fingers. It was hard. He had formed an
emotional bond with Smith. They were in this together. But
to save the young Ranger, he had to treat him like an
inanimate object, a machine that was broken and needed
fixing. He continued to root for the artery. If he failed to
find it, Smith would probably die. He picked through the
open upper thigh, reaching up to his pelvis, parting layers
of skin, fat, muscle, and vessel, probing through pools of
bright red blood. He couldn't find it. Once severed, the
upper end of the artery had evidently retracted up into
Smith's abdomen. The medic stopped. Smith was lapsing
into shock. The only recourse now would be to cut into the
abdomen and hunt for the severed artery and clamp it. But
that would mean still more pain and blood loss. Every time
he reached into the wound Smith lost more blood. Schmid
and Perino were covered with it. Blood was everywhere. It
was hard to believe Smith had any more to lose.

'It hurts really bad,' he kept saying. 'It really hurts.'

In time his words and movements came slowly,
labored. He was in shock.

Schmid was beside himself. He had squeezed six liters
of fluid into the young Ranger and was running out of bags.
He had tried everything and was feeling desperate and
frustrated and angry. He had to leave the room. He got one
of the other men to continue applying pressure on the
wound and walked out to confer with Perino. Both men
were covered with Smith's blood.

'If I don't get him out of here right now, he's gonna die,'
Schmid pleaded.

The lieutenant radioed Steele again.

'Sir, we need a medevac. A Little Bird or something.
For Corporal Smith. We need to extract him now. '

Steele relayed this on the command net. It was tough to

get through. It was nearly five o’clock and growing dark.
All of the vehicles had turned back to the air base. Steele
learned that there would be no relief for some time. Putting
another bird down in their neighborhood was out of the
question.

The captain radioed Perino back and told him, for the
time being, that Smith would just have to hang on.

4

Stebbins shook with fear. Having his friends around
him kept him going, but that was about all that did. You
could be prepared for the sights and sounds and smells of
war, but the horror of it, the blood and gore and heart-
rending screams of pain, the sense of death perched right
on your shoulder, breathing in your ear, there was no
preparation for that. Things felt balanced on an edge,
threatening at any moment to spin out of control. Was this
what he had wanted so badly? An old platoon sergeant had
told him once, 'When war starts, a soldier wants like hell to
be there, but once he's there, he wants like hell to come
home.’

Beside Stebbins, a burst of rounds hit Heard's M-60,
disabling it permanently. Heard drew his 9 mm handgun
and fired it. Squinting down the alley west into the setting
sun, Stebbins could see the white shirts of Somali fighters.
There were dozens of them. Groups would come running
out and fire volleys up the alley, and then duck back behind
cover. Over his right shoulder, across Marehan Road and
down the alley, he could hear the rescue guys hammering
at the wreck, still trying to free Wolcott's body. The sky
overhead was getting darker, and there was still no sign of
the ground convoy. They had actually seen the vehicles
drive past just a few blocks west about at hour earlier.
Where were they?

Everyone dreaded the approaching darkness. One
distinct advantage U.S. soldiers had wherever they fought
was their night-vision technology, their NODs (Night

Observation Devices), but they had left them back at the
hangar. The NODs were worn draped around the neck
when not in use, and weighed probably less than a pound,
but they were clumsy, annoying, and very fragile. It was an
easy choice to leave them behind on a daylight mission.
Now the force faced the night thirsty, tired, bleeding,
running low on ammo, and without one of their biggest
technological advantages. Stebbins, the company clerk,
gazed out at the giant orange ball easing behind buildings
to the west and had visions of a pot of fresh-brewed coffee
out there somewhere waiting for him.

The Little Birds had the lay of the land well enough
now to be making regular gun runs, and were doing a lot to
keep at bay the Somalis crowded around the neighborhood.
The tiny helicopters came swooping in at almost ground
level, flying between buildings with their miniguns ablaze.
It was an amazing sight. The rockets made a ripping sound
and then shook the ground with their blasts. Twombly was
admiring one such run when Sergeant Barton told him the
pilots were still calling for more markers on the road to
better outline the American positions.

'You're going to take this thing,' said Barton, holding up
a fluorescent orange plastic triangle, 'and drop it right out
there,' pointing to the middle of the road.

Twombly didn't want to go. There was so much lead
flying through that road that it felt like suicide to venture
from cover, much less run out to the middle. It crossed his
mind to refuse Barton's order, but just as quickly he
rejected that. If he didn't do it, somebody else would have
to. That wouldn't be fair. He had volunteered to be a
Ranger, he couldn't back out now just because things had
gotten rough. He grabbed the orange triangle angrily, ran
out a few steps, and flung it toward the center of the road.
He dove back to cover.

'That won't do it,’ Barton shouted at him. He explained
that the rotor wash from the birds on their gun runs would
blow the marker away.

'You have to secure it, put a rock on it.'

Furious now, and terribly frightened, Twombly put his

head down and ran out into the road again.

Nelson remembers feeling moved by his friend's
courage. The second Twombly took off again there was
shooting on the street and so much dust kicked up Nelson
couldn't see him. That's the last time I'll ever see Twombly.
But moments later the big man from New Hampshire came
clomping back in, swearing fluently, unscathed.

An old man stumbled out from behind a wall wildly
firing an AK. Rangers from all three corners were pointing
guns at this man, who looked frail and had a shock of white
hair and a long bushy white beard that was stained greenish
on both sides of his mouth, presumably from khat. He was
evidently drunk or stoned or so high that he didn't know
what was happening. His rounds were so off target the
Rangers watching him at first were just stunned, and then
laughed. The old man made a stumbling turn and fired a
round into the wall, far from any targets. Twombly
flattened him with a burst from his SAW.

They saw strange sights as the fight wore on. In the
midst of cascading gunfire. Private David Floyd watched a
gray dove land in the middle of Marehan Road. The bird
scratched at the dirt nonchalantly and strutted a few feet up
the road seemingly oblivious to the fury around it. Then it
flew away. Floyd wistfully watched it go. A donkey pulling
a wagon wandered across the intersection up the hill,
through one of the heaviest fields of fire (near where
Fillmore had been killed), and crossed the road unscathed,
then came trotting back out again minutes later, clearly
confused and disoriented. It was comical. Nobody could
believe the donkey hadn't been hit. Ed Yurek watched with
pity, and amazement. God loves that donkey. Closer to the
wrecked helicopter, a woman kept running out into the
alley, screaming and pointing toward the house at he
southeast corner of the intersection where many of the
wounded had been moved. No one shot at her. She was
unarmed. But every time she stepped back behind cover a
wicked torrent of fire would be unleashed where she
pointed. After she'd done this twice, one of the D-boys
behind the tail of Super Six One said, 'If that bitch comes

back. I'm going to shoot her.'

Captain Coultrop nodded his approval. She did, and the
D-boy shot her down on the street.

Then there was the woman in a blue turban, a powerful
woman with thick arms and legs who came sprinting across
the road carrying a heavy basket in both arms. She was
wearing a bright blue-and-white dress that billowed behind
her as she ran. Every Ranger at the intersection blasted her.
Twombly, Nelson, Yurek, and Stebbins all opened up.
Howe fired on her from further up the hill. First she
stumbled, but kept on going. Then, as more rounds hit her,
she fell and RPGs spilled out of her basket onto the street.
The shooting stopped. She had been hit by many rounds
and lay in a heap in the dirt for a long moment, breathing
heavily. Then the woman pulled herself up on all fours,
grabbed an RPG round, and crawled. This time the massive
Ranger volley literally tore her apart. A fat 203 round blew
off one of her legs. She fell in a bloody lump for a few
moments, then moved again. Another massive burst of
rounds rained on her and her body came further apart. It
was appalling, yet some of the Rangers laughed. To Nelson
the woman no longer even looked like a human being;
she'd been transformed into a monstrous bleeding hulk, like
something from a horror movie. Later, just before it got
dark, he looked back over. There was a large pool of blood
on the street, blood and clothing and the basket, but the
RPG rounds and what remained of the woman were gone.

When the sun had slipped behind the buildings to the
west, shadow fell over the alley and it became easier for
Stebbins and Heard to find the Sammies who were
shooting at them from windows and doorways. Their
muzzle flashes gave their positions away clearly. Stebbins
squeezed off rounds carefully, trying to conserve ammo.
Heard was shooting now with an M-16. Nearly deaf, he
tapped Stebbins on the shoulder and shouted, 'Steb, I just
want you to know in case we don't get out of this, I think
you're doing a great job.'

Then the ground around them shook. Stebbins heard a
shattering Kabang! Kabang! Kabang! the sound of big

rounds smashing into the stone wall of the corner where
they had taken cover. He was engulfed in smoke. The wall
that had been their shield for more than an hour began to
come apart. Somebody with a big gun down the alley had
zeroed in on them, and was just taking down their position.
After the first shattering volley, Stebbins stepped out into
the alley and returned fire at the window where he had seen
the muzzle flash. Then he ducked back behind his corner,
took a knee, and kept placing rounds in the same place.

Kabang! Kabang! Kabangl Three more ear-shattering
rounds hit the corner again and Stebbins was knocked
backward and flat on his ass. It was as though someone had
pulled him from behind with a rope. He felt no pain, just a
shortness of breath. The explosions or the way he had
slammed into the ground had sucked the air right out of
him. He was dazed and covered once again with white
powder from the pulverized mortar of the wall. He felt
angry. The son of a bitch almost killed me!

'You okay, Stebby? You okay?' asked Heard.

Tm fine, Brian. Good to go.'

Stebbins stood up, infuriated, cursing at full throttle as
he stepped back out into the alley and resumed firing at the
window.

Sergeant Howe, the Delta team leader, watched with
amazement from further up the street. He couldn't believe
the Ranger didn't have the good sense to find better cover.
To Nelson, it looked like somebody had flipped a switch
inside Stebbins. For the second time that hour he thought
Stebbins had been killed. But the mild-mannered office
clerk bounced back up. He was a changed man, a wild
animal, dancing around, shooting like a madman. Nelson,
Twombly, Barton, and Yurek were all shooting now at the
same window, when there came a whooosh and a cracking
explosion and both Stebbins and Heard screamed and
disappeared in a ball of flame.

That's it for Brian and Stebby.

Stebbins woke up flat on his back again. He had the
same feeling as before, like he'd been punched in the solar
plexus. He gasped for air and tasted dust and smoke. Up

through the swirl he saw darkening blue sky and two
clouds. Then Heard's face came swimming into view.

'Stebby, you okay? You okay, Stebby?'

'Yup, Brian. I'm okay,' he said. 'Just let me lay here for
a couple of seconds.'

'Okay.'

This time, as he gathered his thoughts, common sense
intruded. They needed help at this spot. More of the corner
had been blown away. Stebbins figured he'd been hit in the
chest by stones flying off the wall, enough to knock him
over and out, but not enough to penetrate his body armor
and seriously hurt him. The Sammies had set up some kind
of crew-served weapon and it was going to take more than
an M-16 to silence it. As he got back up, he heard Barton
across the alley radioing for help. Then a voice came from
ear level, right behind Stebbins. One of the D-boys was in
the window of the comer building, the same window
Nelson had fired at earlier. The voice sounded cool, like a
surfer's.

'Where's this guy shooting from, dude?'

Stebbins pointed out the window.

'All right, we've got it covered. Keep your heads down.'
From inside the building, the Delta marksman fired three
203 rounds, dropping them right into the targeted window.
There was an enormous blast inside the building. Stebbins
figured the round had detonated some kind of ammo cache,
because there was a flash throughout the first floor of the
building too bright and loud for a 203 round. After that it
went dark. Black smoke poured from the window.

It got quiet. Stebbins and Heard and the guys across the
alley shouted their congratulations to the Dboy for the
impressive shot. Back on one knee a little further behind
the chewed-up wall, Stebbins watched some lights flick on
in the distance and was reminded that they were in the
middle of a big city, and that in some parts of the city life
was proceeding normally. There were fires burning
somewhere back toward the Olympic Hotel, where they
had roped in. It seemed like ages ago. He thought now that
it was dark, maybe the Sammies would all put down their

weapons and go home, and he and his buddies could walk
back to the hangar and call it a night. Wouldn't that be
nice?

A voice shouted across the intersection that everyone
was to retreat back toward the bird. As darkness fell, the
force was going to move indoors. One by one, the men on
his corner sprinted across the intersection. Stebbins and
Heard waited their turn. The volume of fire had died down.
Okay, the big part of the war is over.

Stebbins then heard a whistling sound, and turned in
time to see what looked like a rock hurtling straight at him.
It was going to hit his head. He ducked and turned his
helmet toward the missile, and then he vanished in fire and
light.

5

Sergeant Fales, the wounded PJ, got a radio call for a
medic. They needed somebody fast across the wide
intersection west of the downed helicopter. Private
Rodriguez was bleeding badly from the gunshot wound to
his crotch. The men were all falling back into the various
casualty collection points. The medic Kurt Schmid was in
the courtyard up the road working on Corporal Smith. No
one on the other side of Marehan Road had the skills to
deal with an injury as severe as Rodriguez's. Fales was
propped up behind the Kevlar plates near the tail boom of
the helicopter, his hastily bandaged leg stretched out
useless before him.

His buddy Tim Wilkinson, who was working on some
of the wounded alongside him, had been making him
laugh. The two air force medics had long commiserated
over how unlikely they were to see real combat on this
deployment. Wilkinson had just tapped Fales on the
shoulder as the bullets flew overhead and said, 'Be careful
what you wish for.'

Wilkinson was still working under the impression that
the ground convoy (long since returned broken and

bleeding to base) was going to arrive at any moment. He
felt his job was to get all the wounded patched up and on
litters, ready to be loaded up as soon as the trucks arrived.
When he'd instructed Fales to get on a stretcher earlier that
afternoon, the master sergeant had balked.

’Hey, you know the deal. Get on!' Wilkinson insisted.

Fales had climbed on reluctantly and had been strapped
down, but as time wore on and the vehicles didn't show,
Pales worked himself free of the straps, retrieved his
weapon, and resumed firing. Now he heard the call from
across the street.

'They need a medic, Wilky.'

Bullets and RPG rounds formed a deadly barrier
between their position and the men across Marehan Road.
Wilkinson folded up his medical kit and moved toward the
intersection. Then he stopped. If he was afraid, he had
simply filed the emotion away. Ever since the rounds had
peppered the inside of the helicopter, filling it with a little
snowstorm of dust and debris, Wilkinson had just stopped
worrying about bullets and focused on his job, which was
demanding enough to block out everything else. He worked
quickly and with purpose. There were more things to do
than he could get done. It was as though he couldn't think
about both things, about both the danger and the work. So
he concentrated on the work. Now he turned to his friend
and deadpanned an absurd and deliberately cinematic
request.

'Cover me,' he said.

And he ran, and ran, plowing across the wide road, head
down as the volume of fire suddenly surged. Wilkinson's
buddies would later joke that he wasn't shot because he was
so slow the Sammies had all miscalculated his speed and
aimed too far in front of him. To the medic, it just felt like
he had willed himself safely across the street. Once inside
the Delta command-post courtyard he began to assess the
wounded, making quick triage decisions. It was obvious
Rodriguez needed help first. He was bleeding heavily, and
very frightened. Wilkinson tried to calm him.

The medic cut open Rodriguez's uniform to assess the

damage. Rodriguez had been hit by a round that entered his
buttock and bored straight through his pelvis, blowing off
one testicle as it exited through his upper thigh. The first
goal was to stop Rodriguez from bleeding out. If his
femoral artery had been hit (as with Smith, across the
street), he knew there wasn't much chance of stopping the
bleeding. Wilkinson began applying field dressings,
stuffing wads of Curlex into the gaping exit wound, Ffe
wrapped the area tightly with an Ace bandage. Wilkinson
then slipped rubber, pneumatic pants over Rodriguez's legs
and pelvis, and pumped them with air to apply still more
pressure to the wound. The bleeding stopped. He dosed
Rodriguez with morphine and started an IV to replenish
fluids, which he quickly exhausted trying to get the private
stabilized.

He radioed over to Fales, 'You guys got any more
fluids?'

They did. Wilkinson told them to just bag them up and
toss them as far as they could in his direction. He watched
across the street as one of the men there wound up for the
heave, and realized that was a bad idea. He called back
over and told them not to throw it. If the contents broke
open, or were hit by a round, they'd waste precious fluids.
If the bags spilled out, he'd be stuck in the middle of
Marehan Road gathering it all up. He decided it would be
better to brave the road twice at full speed than stop in the
middle of it.

He ran across, again moving at what seemed tortoise
pace, and again arriving unscathed. The men watching
from their positions hunkered down around the intersection
were amazed at Wilkinson's bravery. Wilkinson told Fales
that he would have to go back for good this time.
Rodriguez was in a critical state. He needed to be taken out
immediately. Wilkinson would care for him until that
happened. Then, with the fluids cradled in his arms, head
down, he dashed across the road for the third and last time.
Again, he arrived unhurt.

As he burst back into the courtyard, one of the D-boys
told him, 'Man, God really does love medics.'

It was fast growing dark. Wilkinson got help moving
Rodriguez and the others into a back room. He learned then
that the convoy coming to rescue them had turned back,
and that they were going to be spending the night.

Wilkinson sought out Captain Miller.

'Look, I've got a critical here,' he said. 'He needs to get
out right now. The others can wait, but he needs to come
out.'

Miller gave him a look that said, We're in a bad spot
here, what can I say?

6

Specialist Stebbins had his eyes closed but he still saw
bright red when the grenade exploded. He felt searing
flames and then he just felt numb.

He smelled burned hair and dust and hot cordite and he
was tumbling, tumbling, mixed up with Heard, until they
both came to rest sitting upright staring at each other.

'Are you okay?' Heard asked after a long moment.

'Yeah, but I don't have my weapon.’

Stebbins crawled back to his position, looking for his
weapon. He found it in pieces. There was a barrel but no
hand grip. The dust was still thick in the air; he could feel it
up his nose and in his eyes and could taste it. He could also
taste blood. He figured he'd busted his lip.

He needed another weapon. He stood up and started for
the door of the courtyard where the D-boys were holed up,
figuring he'd grab one of the wounded's rifles, but he fell
down. He got up and took a step and then fell down again.
His left leg and foot felt like they were asleep. After falling
the second time he walked, dragging his leg, toward the
courtyard. He found his buddy Heard standing in the
doorway telling one of the D-boys, 'My buddy Steb is still
out there.'

Stebbins put his hand on Heard's shoulder.

'Brian, I'm okay.'

Wilkinson grabbed hold of Stebbins, who looked a

fright. He was covered with dirt and powder and dust, his
pants were mostly burned off, and he was bleeding from
wounds up and down his leg. He was groggy and seemed
not to have noticed his injuries.

'Just let me sit down for a few minutes,' Stebbins said.
'I'll be okay.'

The medic helped Stebbins limp into the back room
where the other wounded were gathered. It was dark, and
Stebbins smelled blood and sweat and urine. The RPG that
had exploded outside had briefly set fire to the house, and
there was a thick layer of black smoke now hanging from
the ceiling about halfway to the floor. The window was
open to air things out, and everyone was sitting low. There
were three Somalis huddled on a couch. Rodriguez was in
the corner moaning and taking short, loud sucking breaths.
He had an IV tube in his arm and these weird inflated pants
around his middle. Fucking got his dick shot off.

Heard was arguing with a medic, 'Look, I've just got a
little scratch on my wrist. I'm fine. Really. I should put a
bandage on it and go back.'

The Somalis moved to the floor and Wilkinson eased
Stebbins down on the couch and began cutting off his left
boot with a big pair of shears.

’Hey, not my boots!' he complained. 'What are you
doing that for?'

Wilkinson slid the boot off smoothly and slowly,
removing he sock at the same time, and Stebbins was
shocked to see a golf ball-sized chunk of metal lodged in
his foot. He realized for the first time that he'd been hit. He
had noticed that his trousers looked burned and singed, and
now, illuminated by the medic's white light, he saw that the
blackened flaking patches along his leg were skin! He felt
no pain, just numbness. The fire from the explosion had
instantly cauterized all his wounds. He could see the whole
lower left side of his body was burned.

One of the D-boys poked his head in the door and
gestured toward the white light.

'Hey, man, you've got to turn that white light out,' he
said. 'It's dark out there now and we've got to be tactful.'

Stebbins was amused by that word, 'tactful,' but then he
thought about it - tactful, tact, tactics - and it made perfect
sense.

Wilkinson turned off the white light and flicked on a
red flashlight.

Stebbins thrust his hand back into his butt pack for a
cigarette, and found the pack had been burned as well.
Wilkinson wrapped Stebbins's foot.

'You're out of action,' he said. 'Listen, you're numb now
but it's gonna go away. All I can give you is some
Percocet.’ He handed Stebbins a tablet and some iodized
water in a cup. Wilkinson also handed him a rifle. 'Here's a
gun. You can guard this window.'

'Okay.'

’But as your health care professional, I feel I should
warn you that narcotics and firearms don't mix.'

Stebbins just shook his head and smiled.

He kept hearing sounds out the window, coming up the
alley. But there was no one there. His mind was playing
tricks on him. Once or twice he shouted in panic and
blasted a few rounds at the window, but it was just
shadows.

Stebbins' outbursts and the blast of occasional RPG hits
against the outside wall roused Rodriguez from his
morphine reverie. He laughed and shouted out the window
what bad shots the Somalis were. As bad as his wound was,
he felt no pain, just discomfort. The rubber pants had the
lower half of his body in a vise. He asked Wilkinson once
or twice if he would release some of the pressure. The
medic said no.

One of the D-boys came in and asked Stebbins where
the RPG had come from that got him, which direction?
Stebbins wasn't sure.

'From down the alley west,' he said.

But that had been the direction he was facing, and his
injuries were all on his back side. Then Stebbins
remembered he had turned and looked back when he had
seen it coming at him. It must have come from behind him.

'No, east. Not from over the bird though,' he said. 'From

further up the street.'

Finally he was left to sit there alone, his pants blown
off, clutching his rifle, listening to Rodriguez breathing
steadily and to the Somali woman complaining with words
he didn't understand that her husband's flex cuffs were too
tight. He realized he had to urinate badly. There was no
place to go. So he just released the flow where he sat. It felt
great. He looked up at the Somali family and gave them a
weak smile.

'Sorry about the couch,' he said.

7

Still out on the street one and a half blocks south,
Private David Floyd was shooting at everything that
moved. At first he had hesitated firing into crowds when
they massed downhill to the south, but he had seen the
Delta guy, Fillmore, get hit, and Lieutenant Lechner, and
about three or four of his other buddies, and now he was
just shooting at everybody. The world was erupting around
him and shooting back seemed the only sensible response.
But no matter how many rounds he and Specialist Melvin
Dejesus poured down Marehan Road, the crowds kept on
creeping in. Out in the street, still flat in his little dip in the
middle of the road, Specialist John Collett was doing the
same. They were the southernmost point on the perimeter
and had no idea what was happening down around the
crash site, or anywhere else for that matter. When Floyd hit
someone with rounds from his SAW, he could see their
bodies begin to twitch, like they were being zapped with
electricity. They would usually make it only a step or two
more before falling over.

A bullet or a casing or something hit him. Floyd jumped
a foot. He felt down, afraid to take his eyes off the road
ahead, and found that his pants had been ripped from his
crotch to his boot, but the round hadn't even scratched him.
It had evidently come through the tin wall.

'Whooo!' he said, looking over at Dejesus, grateful and

frightened.

His ears were ringing but for some reason he could still
hear. Dejesus was starting to freak out. He was getting
jumpier and jumpier, saying he couldn't stay there
anymore. He had to move. He and Floyd had felt safe for a
time pressed behind the tin shed wall on the west side of
the road in shadow, but as it grew darker now, Dejesus
wasn't staying low. He was up on his feet, hopping up and
down. He said he had to do something. He had a bad
feeling. He had to be somewhere else. Now!

Floyd felt like slapping him.

'Sit yer ass down!' he screamed at him.

As it happened, across Marehan Road men were waving
them into the courtyard. Captain Steele had given up for
the time being catching up to Lieutenants Perino and
DiTomasso in the next block. He wanted all the men at this
southern end of the perimeter to consolidate in the
courtyard. Already there were three Delta teams and a
number of wounded in the small space, including Neathery
and Errico, who both had gunshot wounds to their biceps,
and Lechner, who was still howling with the pain of his
shattered right lower leg. Goodale was still working the
radio while a medic stuffed Curlex into the exit wound in
his buttock. The courtyard was a haven, but the wide road
that separated Floyd, DeJesus, and the other members of
Chalk Three from it loomed like an impassable gulf.

One by one, they ran for it. Private George Siegler went
first. Then Collett jumped up from his spot in the middle of
the road and sprinted for the door. Private Jeff Young, his
big glasses bouncing on his nose and long legs pumping
high, made it across next. As each man ran, Floyd and
DeJesus, who had settled down again, blasted rounds to the
south to provide covering fire. Finally, only Floyd and
DeJesus were left.

'You're gonna run across that road,' Floyd told his
buddy.

DeJesus nodded.

'But, listen here. When you get across, don't you go
through that doorway, see? You turn around and start

shooting, because as soon as you're across, I'm coming.
Okay?'

DeJesus nodded. Floyd wasn't at all sure he'd gotten
through.

He must have blasted fifty rounds as DeJesus ran. And
his friend didn't forget. Before entering the courtyard,
DeJesus turned, dropped to one knee, and started shooting.
Floyd felt like he had lead in his boots as he ran. His torn
pants were flapping around him like a skirt, and he wasn't
wearing any underwear, so he felt naked in more ways than
one as his legs churned up the road. It seemed like the
doorway to the courtyard was actually receding while he
ran.

But he made it.

8

Across the city, back at the Ranger's airfield base an
hour or so earlier, the truckloads of injured and dead off the
lost convoy had arrived. This was the kind of catastrophe
Major Rob Marsh had long planned for, hoping he would
never see. He had entered the army in 1976 as a Special
Forces medic, and then had gone on to medical school at
the University of Virginia. His father, John Marsh, was
then Secretary of the Army. Marsh was working as a flight
surgeon in Texas when he had met General Garrison. The
two had hit it off. A few years later, as Delta commander.
Garrison invited Marsh to be the unit's surgeon - no doubt
mindful of the family connection. Marsh said no, fearing
that the offer might have more to do with his father than his
medical skills. But when the offer was renewed about a
year later, he'd accepted. He'd been doctoring for the unit
ever since, eight years now.

One of Marsh's proudest innovations were four large
trauma chests, four-by-two -foot trunks, packed with IV
fluid bags, gauze, Curlex, petroleum jelly, needles, chest
tubes... all the things needed for initial treatment of
wounds. Instead of just filling the chests with the

equipment. Marsh and his staff had packaged fifteen
separate Ziploc bags in each tmnk, five serious-wound
packets and ten for lesser wounds. The idea was to assess
the seriousness of an injury, then grab the appropriate
packet. Marsh had seen British forces do that during the
Falkland Islands war. Delta had been lugging the trunks
around with them now for years, not always happily.
Officers had complained about how much space the trunks
took up on pallets, and more than once had tried to have
them removed. In Marsh's experience, it was always
officers with actual combat experience like Grrison who
would step in to save his chests. Now, for the first time,
they needed them.

Marsh had been hovering around the JOC all afternoon
as the mission deteriorated. At first, Garrison had been in
the back of the room, chewing on his unlit cigar, listening
and watching quietly. He was not one to interfere. Some
top commanders insisted on calling most of the shots
themselves, but Garrison wasn't like that. When they'd
begun this deployment, the general had given a little speech
explaining that, for the first time in his career, he'd been
given command of men he felt he didn't need to lead. They
knew how to lead themselves. Garrison told them his job
was just to supply them with what they needed and stay out
of their way. But as things began going wrong, the general
had moved to the front of the room.

Marsh had to leave the JOC to tend to Private
Blackburn - who had not, as the medic had feared, broken
his neck when he fell from the Black Hawk. The young
Ranger had suffered head and neck trauma, and had a few
broken bones. Marsh was working on him when he got
word that a Black Hawk was down in the city. When he
returned to peek into the JOC, there was an anxious buzz
about the place. Commanders seemed fixated on the TV
screens. Garrison was fully engaged. Things had clearly
gone amok.

The army field hospital at the U.S. embassy was alerted
to be ready for casualties. There was some discussion about
sending men directly there, but it was decided to do the

primary care at Marsh's tent. He was ready. He had two
surgeons, a nurse anesthetist, and two physician assistants.
Nurses from the adjacent air force mobile surgical facility
also volunteered to help. There would be a triage area just
outside the tent. The most urgent cases would go directly
inside. Those who could wait would go to a holding area
out back. Those who were ’expectant,' near death and
beyond help, would go to a separate spot near the
ambulance, away from the other wounded. Marsh had
designated his unit's ambulance for the dead. It was cool in
there. The bodies would be out of the sun and out of view.
Pilla's body was already there.

When the convoy pulled up it was like a scene out of
some nightmarish medieval painting. The back of one of
the five-tons opened on a mass of bleeding, wailing,
moaning men. Griz Martin sat to one side holding his
entrails in his hands, his legs shattered, awake but groggy.
There hadn't even been time in most cases for the wounds
to have been bandaged. Marsh had just seconds to make a
judgment call on each as the litter bearers lifted them out.
Private Adalberto Rodriguez, who had been blown up and
run over, went into the tent. A Delta sergeant, whose left
calf had been shot off, went out back to wait. Into the tent
went Sergeant Ruiz, who had a sucking wound in his chest.
Some of the wounded Rangers were dazed. They wandered
around the triage area, sputtering angrily. Marsh noted they
all were still carrying weapons. He asked the chaplain to
start gathering those guys and talking to them.

Delta medic Sergeant First Class Don Hutchinson
confronted Marsh about Griz. Hutch and Griz were close.

'He's hurt real bad. Doc.'

Some of the other Dboys had come over to be with
Griz, who was semiconscious with what Marsh recognized
as a clearly non-survivable injury. His midsection was
basically gone, and when Marsh tried to turn him over, he
saw the whole back of his pelvis had been blown off. Griz
was in shock level three going into four. His skin was pasty
pale. He'd obviously lost a tremendous amount of blood. It
was amazing that he was still alive, much less

semiconscious, but when Marsh took his hand, Griz
gripped it as hard as the doctor's hand had ever been
gripped. He should have labeled him ’expectant,' or certain
to die, and sent him back by the ambulance, but with all the
guys from the unit pressing in, urging him to do something.
Marsh felt compelled to act. He felt sure it was hopeless,
but they'd give Griz a full-court press anyway.

Marsh sent into the tent Private Kowalewski, the
Ranger driver whose torso had been penetrated by the
unexploded RPG. Amazingly, he still had vital signs.
Inside, Captain Bruce Adams, a general surgeon, examined
the broken body of the soldier and recoiled at what he
found. Kowalewski’ s left arm was gone - one of the air
force nurses would find it, to her horror, in his pants pocket
where Specialist Hand had placed it. Adams began working
to restore Kowalewski’s breathing while a nurse removed
his clothing. They found the entrance wound of the RPG on
one side of his chest, and, lifting a flap of skin under his
right arm, Adams saw the tapered front end of the grenade.

Marsh came by for a quick second assessment and told
Adams, 'This guy's expectant. Don't waste any more time
on him.’

Assigned to help carry the nearly dead man back out
was Sergeant First Class Randy Rymes, a munitions expert.
It was Rymes who recognized that Kowalewski had a live
bomb embedded in his chest. The detonator was on the tip,
just under his right arm. Instead of taking him out by the
ambulance, Rymes and another soldier built a sandbag
bunker and placed Kowalewski’s body inside it. Rymes
then stretched out beside the bunker on his stomach and
reached his hand around to delicately remove the tip of the
grenade from under the man's skin.

While all this was going on, commanders inside the
IOC had watched with horror as triumphant Somalis
overran the site of the second Black Hawk crash, pilot
Mike Durant's, and were now getting frantic calls for a
chopper to medevac Smith and Carlos Rodriguez from the
first crash site. They had ninety-nine men pinned down in
the city, and no rescue force on its way. They knew it

would be foolhardy to try to put another Black Hawk down
there to evacuate the two badly injured Rangers. The
volume of fire was much heavier there than anywhere else
in Mogadishu, and the Somalis had already shot down four
Black Hawks. Garrison had pilots who were willing to try,
but there was no point in getting more men killed trying to
save two.

It had been easy to believe, prior to this day, that the
Somali warlord Adid lacked broad popular support. But
this fight had turned into something akin to a popular
uprising. It seemed like everybody in the city wanted
suddenly to help kill Americans. There were burning
roadblocks everywhere. It was obvious Aidid and his clan
had been waiting for the right moment, and this was it. At
the second crash site, seen from high overhead, there was
no sign of Shughart, Gordon, Durant, or the Super Six Two
crew, only busy crowds of excited Skinnies still swarming
over the wreckage. There was a brief flurry of hope when
the observation birds picked up tracking beacons from
Durant's and his copilot Ray Frank's flight suits, but it was
quickly dashed when it became apparent that the beacons
had been stripped from the pilots by canny Aidid militia
and were being run all over the city to confuse the airborne
search.

As for the men around the first crash site, they would be
all right. Those ninety-nine were some of the toughest
soldiers in the world. They were superbly trained, well-
armed, and mean as hell. They owned that neighborhood
and nobody was going to take it away from them, certainly
no armed force in Mogadishu.

Unless they ran out of ammo, that is, or keeled over
from dehydration. The C2 helicopter had begun calling for
help shortly before dusk.

- Need a resupply... IV bags, ammo, and water...
Obviously we need them to hurry as fast as they can. Our
boys on the ground are running out of bullets.

- Romeo Six Four [Harrell], this is Adam Six Four
[Garrison], You want us to put resupply on a helo?

- If you can. Put resupply on a helo. Try to take it out to

the northern crash site. They're running out of ammo. IV
bottles, and water, over.

Few of the Rangers had even bothered to take full
canteens. They had been running and fighting now in
sweltering heat for several hours. If they were going to
make it through the night they would need more than skill
and willpower. So even though it risked turning a bad
situation worse. Garrison ordered a Black Hawk in. They
could drop water and ammo and medical supplies, and, if
possible, land and pull the two critical Rangers out. In the
JOC, most of the officers believed the helicopter would be
shot out of the sky. It would most likely crash-land right
there on Marehan Road. Either way, the men on the ground
would get their ammo and water.

Black Hawk Super Six Six, piloted by Chief Warrant
Officers Stan Wood and Gary Fuller, moved down through
the night just after seven o'clock, guided by infrared strobe
lights set out on the wide street just south of the crash site.
As the helicopter descended, machine-gun fire erupted
again from points all around the Ranger perimeter, and
RPGs flew. The men inside courtyards and houses were
startled by how close the gunfire was to their positions, in
some cases on the other side of the walls. The rotor wash
from the Black Hawk kicked up a furious sandstorm.

It hovered for about thirty seconds, which was about
twenty-eight seconds too long as far as Sergeant Howe was
concerned. He held his breath as the deafening bird hung
over the block, afraid that it was going to pancake in on
them. Delta Sergeant First Class Alex Szigedi, who had
survived the lost convoy earlier that afternoon, now hustled
in the back of the helicopter with another operator to shove
the kit bags filled with water, ammo, and IV bags
overboard. The helicopter was getting riddled. Szigedi was
hit in the face. Bullets poked holes in the rotor blades and
the engine, which began sprouting fluids. One round passed
through the transmission gearbox. Super Six Six kept
flying. As it pulled up and away, men scurried out of the
buildings to retrieve the new supplies.

Back in the JOC they heard Wood announce, calmly:

- Resupply is complete.

The stranded force had been tucked in for the night.

9

The fight now raged around three blocks of Mogadishu
real estate. The block immediately south of the crash was
occupied in two places. The CSAR team and Lieutenant
DiTomasso's Chalk Two Rangers, about thirty-three men in
all, had moved in through the wall knocked over by Super
Six One on its way down. They had begun spreading out to
adjacent rooms and courtyards to the south. Abdiaziz Ali
Aden was still hiding in one of those back rooms.
Lieutenant Perino had led his men into a courtyard on the
same block through a door on the east side of Marehan
Road. He and about eight other soldiers were grouped
where Sergeant Schmid was still working on Corporal
Smith, who was slowly fading away. Perino still wasn't
sure where the downed bird was or how close they were to
DiTomasso, although they were separated now by only a
few feet. Captain Miller and his contingent of D-boys and
wounded Rangers were in the courtyard Howe had cleared
on the west side of Marehan Road. Miller's twenty-five
men had spread out into that block, moving into rooms off
the courtyard. The third block was across a wide alley
south on the same side of the street as Perino. There, in the
courtyard they'd sought shelter in earlier, Captain Steele
and three Delta teams were still stuck, unable to push
further down toward the wreck.

This ungainly distribution of forces was problematic.
The Little Bird pilots, who were making frequent gun runs,
were having a hard time clearly delineating friendly force
locations from targets. From the C2 Black Hawk high
above, Lieutenant Colonel Harrell radioed a request to
Captain Miller.

- Scotty, is it possible for you to get everybody in one
small tight perimeter? The problem we have is everyone is
spread out. It's hard to get close accurate fire into you. And

mark your location. We need to know exactly where you
are. Is there any way you can accomplish that, over?

Miller explained that Steele seemed reluctant to move
up, and that the Delta teams with Steele were also pinned
down by heavy fire.

- Roger. 1 know it's tough and you're doing the best you
can but try to get everyone at one site and have one guy
talking down there if you can.

Miller conveyed the request to the team leaders
cornered with Steele. Then, just before dark, he ordered
Sergeant Howe to move across Marehan Road and into the
courtyard opposite in order to improve their coverage of
the street. Howe thought it was a poor idea. It did nothing
he could see to improve their position. He'd been out on the
street for long periods earlier, and had a plan of his own.
Steele and the others stranded at the southernmost tip of
this awkward perimeter should move up and consolidate
with them. This would shorten the long leg of the ’L,' give
them a single strong position to hold, and give the Little
Birds a clearly defined one-block area to work around.
They could then establish strong interlocking fire positions
at each of the key intersections, both in front of and behind
the downed bird, and at the south end of the block. Looking
around outside, Howe had seen three buildings that could
be taken down and occupied, which would have expanded
their fire perimeter. A two-story house at the northwest
corner of the intersection off the bird's tail would have
provided a shooting platform that could push the Somali
gunmen to the north several blocks further out. Howe felt
this was so obviously the way to go it surprised him that
the ground commanders hadn't begun it already. Instead, as
Howe saw it, they seemed overwhelmed. They had
followed him into the courtyard and then squatted there,
just as Steele was now squatting in a worthless position off
to the south. Everything in Howe's training said that
survival depended on proactive soldiering. You constantly
assessed your position and worked to improve it.

Howe knew there was no point arguing. He aid the
three men on his team ran across the road in groups of two.

They barged through the front door of a two -room house
and cleared it. There was no one inside. Through a barred
window in back Howe saw Perino and his group. One of
Howe's team members knocked out the bars and just
pushed down the flimsy stone wall to open up a passage
into their space. Perino and Schmid strapped the dying
Corporal Smith to a board and passed him through the
window into the room. There they would be sheltered from
grenades lobbed over the walls.

As far as Howe was concerned, his position sucked.
From the doorway, he could see only the corners of the
alleyways to the south and north. Far from expanding their
field of fire, he could see no more than twenty yards out in
each direction!

Just listening to the shouted questions and commands
on the radio, Howe sensed that some of those in charge
were out of their depth. There was just too much going on.
He could see it in their faces. Sensory overload. When it
happened you could almost see the fog pass over a man's
eyes. They just withdrew. They became strictly reactive.

Take the vaunted Rangers. Some of the Rangers were
out there in the fight, but nobody was telling them what to
do, and they sure as hell didn't know. Most of them were
holed up in back rooms of the house one block south with
their commander, Steele, waiting to see what was going to
happen next. Howe figured there were more than two
dozen capable men and several heavy weapons back there
in that house. What the hell were they doing? That was one
thing he and Miller and even the commanders overhead
seemed to agree on at least. Steele and his Rangers needed
to pick up their wounded and move fifty fucking yards
down the slope to consolidate the perimeter and join the
fucking fight! But Steele wouldn't budge. It was as if the
Rangers saw the D-boys as their big brothers, and since
their big brothers were around, everything would be okay.

Shooting quieted down after the moon came up. It cast
faint shadows out on the street. The Little Bird gun runs lit
up the sky with tracers and rockets. Brass from their
miniguns rained down on the tin rooftops like somebody

banging on the side of an empty metal bucket. There were
bodies of Somalis still stretched out on the road. Howe had
noticed that the Sammies were good about hauling off their
wounded and dead. Bodies tended not to stay put unless
they were right in the middle of the street. Weapons, too. If
there was a weapon down on the ground, it would be gone
eventually unless it was broken. They were smart street
fighters. Howe felt a grudging professional admiration.
They were disciplined, and what they lacked in
sophisticated weapons and tactics they made up for with
determination. They used concealment very well. Usually
all you saw of a shooter was the barrel of his weapon and
his head. Once darkness fell and the amateurs went home,
the firing became less frequent but more accurate.

Shortly after moonrise, Howe was startled by loud
voices from around the corner north of his doorway, over
where Stebbins and Heard had been hit. At first he thought
it was Rangers. Who else would be dumb enough to be
talking that loud out on the street? But the Rangers were all
supposed to be off the street. He popped an earplug and
listened harder. The \oices were speaking Somali. They
must have been half deaf like everybody else from all the
explosions, and didn't realize how loud they were talking.
Sometimes it took soldiers two or three days to regain full
hearing after a fight. As three Somalis rounded the corner,
one of the D-boys from across the street shone a white light
on the first in line. His eyes looked as wide as a raccoon's
startled in a garbage can. With his rifle resting on a door-
jamb, Howe placed his tritium sight post on the second
man aid began shooting on full automatic, sweeping his
fire in a smooth motion over the third man. All three
Somalis went down hard. Two of the men struggled to their
feet and dragged the third man up and around the corner.

Howe and the other operators let them go. They didn't
want to expose their firing positions with more muzzle
flashes. Howe was disgusted again with this 5.56 ammo.
When he put people down he wanted them to stay down.

10

When Steele and his men had first moved into the
courtyard it was bedlam. The noise was relentless:
shooting, grenade blasts, helicopter rotors, radio calls, men
shouting, crying, groaning, screaming back and forth,
trying to be heard over the din, each one's need more urgent
than the next man's. There was smoke and gunpowder and
dust in the air. Poor Lieutenant Lechner was bleeding a
river from his shattered right leg and bellowing with pain.

The courtyard itself was about fifteen feet wide and
maybe eighteen feet long. There were two rooms to the
right as you entered, two rooms to the left, and at the rear
was a covered porch walled off from the open middle with
ornate concrete latticework. The first room to the left was
filled, floor to ceiling, with tires. The first room on the right
held the Somali family who lived here. They had been
searched, flex-cuffed, and placed in the corner. Steele had
five wounded men back behind the concrete partition. Two
of them, Goodale and Lechner, could no longer walk.
Medics were still working on Lechner. Steele had three
teams of E>boys mixed in with his force, none of whom
answered to him, which further confused matters.

At one point the D-boys were talking about putting a
heavy gun out on the street just outside the courtyard
doorway. They all carried rifles. Specialist Collett
nervously listened to them discussing it. He was a SAW
gunner, and the only machine gunner who hadn't been
injured. If anybody was going to be sent out there, it would
be him. He'd spent more than an hour crouched behind a
rock in the middle of Marehan Road, and now that he was
finally safely indoors, going back out was the last thing he
wanted. He'd do it, but he dreaded it.

'I'm not sending anyone back outside,' Steele told them.

Collett heaved a quiet sigh of relief.

Steele shouted back to his ranking sergeant, Sean
Watson, to see if there were any back doors to this house.
With all the shooting going on out front he figured, when

they left, it would be best to go out another way. Watson
said there were no back doors.

He could talk on the radio to his lieutenants, Perino and
DiTomasso, but he wasn't sure how far away either of them
was. DiTomasso spent a few minutes on the radio trying to
orient the captain, but they had come in from different
directions and neither was familiar with the neighborhood
so the discussion got nowhere. Steele felt like he was
playing the childhood game where everyone is asked to
turn their backs to the blackboard and draw a picture
according to the teacher's instructions - the point of the
game being how differently all the drawings turned out. In
fact, Steele was no more than fifty yards away from Perino,
who was separated from DiTomasso by nothing more than
a eight-inch flimsy interior wall. They might as well have
been miles apart.

Steele was desperate to get a fix on where all his men
had gone, frightened that one or more had been left behind
in the confusion. He'd lost track of Sergeant Eversmann
and Chalk Four completely. The last he knew, he had
ordered them to head to the crash site on foot. He did not
know that they had been picked up by the ground convoy
and then gone through hell before returning to base, where
they were now. Perino and DiTomasso had given him a
count on who was with them, and Perino had seen
Rodriguez and Boren pulled into the casualty center across
Marehan Road. But what of Stebbins and Heard? Steele
had no direct radio link to Captain Miller, so he relayed his
requests for information to the C2 bird, and they passed
them along to Miller.

- Kilo Six Four [Miller], this is Romeo Six Four
[Harrell]. He [Steele] is requesting status on a Ranger
Stebbins and a Ranger Heard. He thinks they are with you.
Can you confirm, over?

The C2 bird reported back to Steele:

- Roger, Juliet, the answer is affirmative. They have
those two Rangers with them, over.

That was good news. But nobody seemed to know
where Eversmann's chalk had gone. Steele had just begun

to contemplate a next move when Perino radioed him again
about Smith. The captain knew it was hopeless to keep
asking for another helicopter to come down, but he also
knew he wasn't the one covered with Smith's blood,
watching the young man's life ebb away.

'I'm gonna ask for it, but it's going to be pretty hard to
put a bird in,' Steele said.

Tve got a big intersection right outside,' said Perino.
'They can put one down there.'

Steele called up on the command net.

- Romeo Six Four, this is Juliet Six Four. We need
mede-vac NOW. We have a critical who is not going to
make it.

Word came back down minutes later.

- Roger, understand. We are pressing the QRF to get
there as quickly as they can. I doubt that we can get a
Hawk in there to get anybody out, over.

* * *

Medic Kurt Schmid had relayed a request for blood,
getting Smith's type off his dog tags. After the re -supply
Black Hawk came and went, he approached Delta team
leader Paul Howe.

'Was there any blood?'

'No,' Howe told him.

Schmid figured the blood supply must be stretched thin
dealing with all the casualties from the lost convoy. He had
heard on the radio that the docs back at the base were
drawing blood from donors to meet the sudden demand.

He kept working on Smith, even though it now felt
helpless. He had Perino and others in their courtyard taking
turns pressing into Smith's lower abdomen to keep pressure
over the femoral artery. The medic had finally relented and
given Smith a morphine drip. It had quieted the corporal.
He was still conscious, but just barely. He looked pale and
distant. He had begun to make peace with dying. Perino
could tell that even though Smith was now quiet and weak
he was still alert enough to be very scared. He talked about

his family. His father had been a Ranger in Vietnam, and
had lost a leg in combat. His younger brother, Mike, was
planning to enlist and enter Ranger school. Mike's twin,
Todd, also wanted to join. Jamie had grown up wanting to
be nothing else. He had played football and lacrosse in high
school in northern New Jersey, and done well enough in his
classes to graduate, which was good enough. He hadn't
been interested in books or school; he knew what he
wanted to be. Nothing could deter him. Not even the scare
his father, James Sr, had tried to put in him, speaking to
him graphically about the horrors he had seen and
experienced in Nam. Three years earlier, when he was still
in basic training, Smith had written to his lather, 'Today
while walking back from lunch I saw two Rangers walking
through the company area. It's the dream of being one of
those guys in faded fatigues and a black beret that keeps
me going.'

Smith was now asking the medic to tell his parents and
family good-bye and to tell them that he had been thinking
of them as he died, and that he loved them. They said
prayers together.

'Hold tight,' Schmid told the dying corporal. 'We're
working on getting you out of here. I’m doing everything I
can.'

Away from Smith, the medic kept telling Perino, 'We
need help. He's not going to make it.'

But how to convey the urgency with so much else going
on? The resupply had delivered more IV fluids, and
Schmid pumped those into Smith, but the kid had lost too
much blood. He needed a doctor and a hospital. Even that
may not have been enough to save him. He was just barely
alive.

When the moon came up, Steele kicked himself for
letting the men leave behind their NODs. Here he was, the
inflexible by-the-book -robot - Ranger tyrant, and he'd
relaxed procedures this one time for what seemed like
ample reason, and now they were in the fight of their lives,
at night, lacking the most significant technological
advantage they had over their enemy. If ever there was a

more perfect illustration of why not to ignore procedure.

Still, it had seemed like such an obvious call that
Sergeant Goodale had ridiculed Private Jeff Young back in
the hangar for even asking about them as they had prepared
to go out.

'Young, think about it. What time is it?'

'About three o'clock.'

'How long have our missions been?'

'About two hours.'

'Is it still light out at five?'

'Yeah.'

'Then why would you want to bring your night vision?'

Steele was mortified by the stupidity of his call. In an
hour or two it was going to be darker than four inches up a
goat's butt. He made a quick check around the courtyard to
see if anybody, maybe just accidentally, had brought NODs
along. No one had. Out the half-opened metal doorway it
now looked dark as a cavern. From where he stood in the
second room at the north end of the courtyard - it appeared
to be the kitchen - Steele could see moonlight reflecting
blue off the barrels of his men's weapons sticking out of
doorways. He called out to them one by one to make sure
no one nodded off.

Miller wasn't sure what was going on down the block.
After he'd relayed the first request for Steele and his men to
move up, Steele had declined an offer to speak directly to
Miller via one of the Dboys' headsets. From the Delta
command position, there was no telling what was wrong
with Steele. There was some concern that the captain had
been injured - the Ranger commander had broadcast that
the 'command element' had been hit, and nobody was sure
if that meant him (Steele had been talking about Lechner).
Miller had relayed a request for Steele to move at least
some of his force down, if not across the intersection, then
to the corner building on their block where they could help
cover the southern intersection. The Ranger commander
had heard the urgings from the command helicopter,
arguing that it would be easier for the Little Birds to do gun
runs if the forces were in a tighter perimeter. The idea of

stepping out of the relative safety of their fortified
courtyard back into the street was hardly appealing;
nevertheless, when the C2 bird made the initial request,
Steele agreed.

He radioed Perino and asked him to throw a blue
Chemlite out his courtyard door into the street.

'Roger, it's out,' said the lieutenant.

Steele then stepped briefly out into the street. He was
surprised how close the light was, only a short sprint up the
road.

He radioed back to Harrell, 'Okay. Hoo-ah.'

Then he went back to tell Sergeant Watson to get ready
for the move. Watson was blunt.

'Hey, sir, uh-uh,' he said. 'No way.'

Watson said he thought the idea was crazy. They could
expect a hail of bullets and grenades the second they
stepped out the door. They had five wounded men, two of
whom (Lechner and Goodale) would have to be carried.
Fillmore's body would also have to be carried. To move
quickly, that would mean four men for each litter, which
would make convenient cluster targets for Somali gunmen.
What was wrong with the position they had? The shooting
had died down and it would take one hell of a lot to
overrun that courtyard. If they stayed where they were,
they had a bigger perimeter. Why move?

The Rangers listened nervously to the discussion. To a
man, they sided with Watson. Private Floyd thought Steele
was nuts to even suggest moving. Goodale certainly didn't
relish the thought of making such a trip on a litter. Moving
was unnecessary and dangerous. It was asking for more
trouble when they already had plenty. Steele took a deep
breath and reconsidered.

'I think you're right,' he told Watson.

He conferred with the D-boys in the courtyard briefly,
then radioed Harrell.

'Right now we're not going to be able to move, not with
all these wounded.'

This was frustrating news for Captain Miller. Nobody
had clearly sorted out who was in charge on the ground. If

some part of Steele's force moved just to the end of their
block, they could better cover the wide alley that ran
between them. Harrell refused to order Steele to make the
move.

- If you stay separated I cannot support you as well,
Harrell told Steele. You're the guy on the ground and you
have to make the call.

Steele had made his call, and that was that. When one
of the operators again offered Steele his headset so the
captain could confer directly with Miller, Steele waved him
away. So there were effectively two separate forces pinned
down now, and their commanders were not talking to each
other.

If Steele wouldn't budge. Miller would at least move his
own men. As the Dboys prepared to leave, Steele was
angry. If they moved out, it would more than halve the
number of able-bodied men at his position. He felt it didn't
make sense, and regarded Miller's move as a kind of 'Fuck
you,' directed at him - and his men. But he did nothing to
stop it.

The operators lined up in the courtyard. When the first
group of four dashed out into the night, the whole
neighborhood erupted. It sounded like the city of
Mogadishu had sprung viciously back to life. Within
seconds, all four of the D-boys came flying back into the
courtyard, tripping over the same metal rim at the bottom
of the door that had tripped Steele up early in the afternoon.
They wound up in a heap on the ground, their gun barrels
clinking together as they untangled.

Relieved that none had been injured, Steele watched
them regroup with sober satisfaction.

- Hey, Captain, we've got to get Smith out. He's getting
worse, came another radio call from Perino.

'Roger,' Steele said.

He knew it was hopeless, but he felt he had a
responsibility to Smith to at least try. He tried the
command net once more. He called up to Harrell.

'Romeo Six Four, this is Juliet Six Four. Our guy is
fading fast. There's a wide intersection suitable for LZ

[landing zone] directly outside.'

- Can you mark it, Juliet? Is it big enough to bring in a
Hawk?

Steele said it was, and that they could mark it. He
waited a few moments for a decision. He could hear the
frustration in Harrell's voice when it returned.

- We put a Hawk in there to resupply and it got shot so
bad the bird is unusable. I think if we try to bring another
MH [MH-60, a Black Hawk], we are just going to have
another bird go down on the ground, over.

This is Juliet Six Four. Roger. What is the ETA on the
armored vehicles?'

There was no answer for a few minutes. Steele called
back, knowing he was pushing.

'Romeo, this is Juliet.'

- Go ahead, Juliet.

'Roger. Do you have an ETA for me?'

-Iam working on it now, standby.

Harrell's irritation showed.

Steele then heard Harrell pleading with the JOC.

- We 've got two critical pax [Carlos Rodriguez was also
in critical condition] that are going to die if we do not get
them out of that location. I don't think that it is secure
enough to bring in a bird. Can you get an ETA for the
ground reaction force, over?

Then, minutes later.

- If the QRF does not get there soon, there will be more
KIAs [Killed in Action] from previously received WIAs
[Wounded in Action]. Get the one-star [Brigadier General
Greg Gile, commander of the 10th Mountain Division] to
get his people moving!

From the commanders' perspective, other than the
plight of Smith and Rodriguez, it made little sense to rush
back out into the fray. Given the roadblocks and ambushes
that had turned back the earlier convoys, the commanders
were not taking any chances with the next one. They were
going back out in major force, with hundreds of men led by
Pakistani tanks and Malaysian armored personnel carriers.
But it was taking time to assemble and organize this force.

Harrell was told it would be at least an hour (it would
actually take three hours) before they were ready to move.
Harrell reported back:

- It is going to be an hour before they get in there. I
don't think they will be able to get there within an hour.

Steele told him that an hour was too long. Air
commander Matthews explained:

- Roger. I want to try to put a bird in but I'm afraid if l
do that we are just going to lose another aircraft , over.

Nobody wanted to write off the two young soldiers.
Back at the JOC, the generals again considered landing a
helicopter to take out Smith and Rodriguez. The pilots were
ready to attempt it. Miller and Steele were asked again if
they could adequately secure a landing zone to get a Black
Hawk in and out. Perino walked out and consulted with
Sergeant Howe, who told him a chopper could get in, but it
damn sure wouldn’t get back out.

Captain Miller's Delta command post was consulted. He
answered:

- We are willing to try and secure a site, but there are
RPGs all over the place. It is going to be really hard to get
a bird in there and get it out. I'm afraid that we are just
going to lose another bird.

Harrell delivered the reluctant verdict.

- We are going to have to hold on the best we can with
those casualties and hope the ground reaction force gets
there on time.

Steele sadly passed this word to Perino. ’It's just too
hot,' Steele told him.

Not long afterward, Smith started hyperventilating, and
then his heart stopped. Medic Schmid went into full
emergency mode. He tried CPR for several rotations,
compressions and ventilations, then he injected drugs
straight into the Ranger's heart. It was no use. He was gone.

Harrell was still pushing hard for the ground rescue
force.

- We've got guys that are going to die if we don't get
them out of there, and I can't get a bird in, over.

It was at about eight o'clock when Steele got another

radio call from Perino.

- Don't worry about the medevac, sir. It's too late.
Steele put out the news on the command net.

- One of the critical WIAs has just been KIA.

* * *

Medic Schmid was shattered by Smith's death. The
corporal had gone from a fully alert, strong Ranger
complaining, ’I’m hurt,' to a dead man in the medic's hands.

Schmid was the chief medic at his location, so he had
other men to attend to and no time to brood, but Smith's
prolonged agony and death would haunt him for years
afterward. Still covered with Smith's blood, he vent to
work on the others. He felt drained, terribly frustrated, and
defeated. Was it his fault? Should he have found someone
and tried to set up a direct transfusion early on, back when
he expected rescue was imminent? He went back over
every step he had taken in treating Smith's wound, second-
guessing himself, blaming himself for every decision that
had turned out wrong and had wasted time.

Finally, he did his best to make peace with it. Schmid
believed if he could have gotten Smith back to the base, his
life would have been saved. He wasn't certain of it, but that
was his gut feeling.

Steele, too, was shaken by news of Smith's death. He
knew nothing yet of Pilla, nor of any of his men who had
taken off with the lost convoy and been killed, Cavaco,
Kowalewski, and Joyce. He’d seen Fillmore shot dead, but
Smith was one of his own. He'd never lost a man before.
Steele thought of them as his men, not the army's or the
regiment's. His. They were his responsibility to train and
lead and keep alive. Now he was going to be sending one
of them home, somebody's precious young son, in a flag-
draped coffin. He walked back to quietly tell Sergeant
Watson. They decided not to tell the other guys yet.

Goodale was in high spirits for somebody with a second
hole through his ass. He showed off his canteen with a
bullet hole through it. He felt no pain from the round that
had passed through his thigh and left a nasty wound on his
right buttock. It wasn't very dignified. When Floyd had
come huffing in after all the men had been waved into the
courtyard from the street, he took one look at the medic
stuffing Curlex up Goodale's exit wound and said, 'You
like taking it up the ass, eh, Goodale?' In the same back
room was Errico, a machine gunner who had been
wounded in both biceps manning his gun, and Neathery,
who'd been wounded in the upper arm when he took over
for Errico. Neathery was distressed. The bullet had
damaged both bicep and tricep and he couldn't make his
right arm work at all.

One of the wounded men was crying, starting to freak
out: 'We’re going to die here!' he kept repeating. 'We’re
never going home!'

'Just shut the fuck up,' said Sergeant Randy Ramaglia.
The man fell silent.

Worst off was Lechner, who was now on a morphine
drip. When Sergeant Ramaglia first came in the dark back
room he flopped down into what felt like a warm puddle.
Then he realized it was Lechner's blood. The room smelled
of blood, a strong musky stink with a faint metallic tinge,
like copper, an odor none of them would forget.

Watson came back at one point looking for more
ammunition. They were down to about half of the supply
they'd carried in.

'I have some flashbangs if you want them,' said
Goodale.

’No, Goodale, I don’t want flashbangs,' he said with
gentle scorn. 'We're not scaring them anymore. We’re going
to kill them now.'

Like the rest of the guys, Goodale was frustrated with
how long it was taking the rescue convoy to come. He'd ask
Steele for an ETA, the captain would give him one, then

that time would pass and Goodale would ask again. Steele
would give him a new time, then that one would pass.

'Atwater,' he shouted out to Steele's radioman. 'Look, I
promised my fiancee I'd call her back tonight and if I don't
I'm really gonna be in some deep shit, so we've got to get
out of here.'

Atwater just gave him a pained grin.

'Hey, you motherfuckers better all quiet down in there,'
came the voice of one of the D-boys. 'All it takes is one
RPG through that back window and you're all fucked.'

Word whispered around about Smith.

'Corporal Smith? What happened to Smith?' asked
Goodale.

'He’s dead.'

The news hit Goodale hard. He and Smith were close.
Both were smart-alecky, wiseass guys, always ready with a
stinger, but Smith was the best. He always kept the guys
laughing. Just before they got called up for this thing.
Smith had confided in Goodale, 'I've got this girl. I think
I'm gonna marry her.’ They'd had a detailed discussion
about ring buying, something Goodale had just gone
through for Kira. Smith's decision to pop the question had
brought them closer. It had moved them to a more serious
level of manhood than the swaggering young cocksmen
around them. They'd spent a lot of time together in the
hangar playing Risk or just shooting the shit. Smitty was
dead?

* * *

Private George Siegler guarded the Somalis who they
had found in the house. They had been herded into the back
corner room, a bedroom. There was a bed and a night table.
The baby-faced soldier, who looked no older than fifteen,
trained his M-16 on the two women, a man, and four
children. The adults were all on their knees. The youngest
of them, a hugely pregnant woman, was crying. The others
had been flex-cuffed, but not this woman, who couldn't
hold the baby with her hands tied. She kept indicating with

her hands that she was thirsty, so Siegler gave her his
canteen. The children were all crying at first. The older
ones looked to be between six and ten. One was an infant.
In time the children stopped crying. So did the pregnant
woman after he gave her water. They couldn't
communicate, but Siegler hoped she understood they meant
her no harm.

It got quieter and quieter as the night wore on. So long
as they showed no light there was no shooting into the
courtyard. Earlier, bullets had been coming through the
open door and popping great divots in the concrete
latticework in back, but now that had stopped. Specialist
Kurth relieved Siegler of the prisoners after a few hours.
He sat sweat-soaked and thirsty. Earlier, when they'd taken
off on the mission, Kurth had felt Ike taking a leak but
didn't, figuring they'd be back inside of an hour or so. He
had ended up laying on his side out in the road behind the
tin shack, urinating while gunfire snapped and popped
around him, thinking. This is what I get.

This whole terrifying experience was having an effect
on Kurth that he didn't fully understand. When he had been
out on the street, crouched behind a rock that was nowhere
near big enough to provide him cover, he'd thought about a
lot of things. His first thought was to get the hell out of the
army. Then, pondering it more as bullets snapped over his
head and kicked up clods of dirt around him, he
reconsidered. / can't get out of the army. Where else am l
going to get to do something like this? And right there, in
that moment, he decided to re -enlist for another four years.

It grew quieter every hour as the night wore on. They
kept getting situation reports, 'sitreps,' from the air force
guy up the street monitoring the various radio nets. The
convoy was just a half hour away. Then, forty-five minutes
later, 'the convoy's an hour away.' You could hear ferocious
shooting off in the distance as the rescue force finally
moved out. Kurth was cotton-mouthed. They all were
terribly thirsty. The taste of dust and gunpowder was in
their mouths and their tongues were sticky and thick.
Nothing in this world would taste as sweet as a cold bottle

of water. Every once in a while a Little Bird would come
roaring in low and there would be a frenzy of shooting and
loud explosions, and the brass from the bird's gun would
clatter off the tin roof and rain into the courtyard. Then it
would get so quiet again Kurth could hear himself
breathing and the steady, hurried beat of his heart.

11

Specialist Waddell never actually got to go indoors with
the rest of the men. When darkness came and everyone
moved inside. Lieutenant DiTomasso told him to pull
security at the west side of the hole that had been made by
the falling Black Hawk. From where he lay behind some
rubble, Waddell was looking out beyond the chopper's bent
tail boom. Sergeant Barton curled up at the other side of the
hole, pointing his weapon east past the front of the bird.

Earlier in the afternoon, Waddell had been terrified they
wouldn't get out before dark. But by dusk he was rooting
for the sun to finish going down. It seemed to take forever.
He figured once it was dark the shooting would die down
and they could breathe easier. He watched the Little Birds
scream in doing gun runs on the alley west, showering him
with brass casings. Their rockets literally shook the ground.
They made a sound like a giant piece of Velcro ripping
open, and then there would be the flash and tremendous
blast. The fact that it was so close felt good. That's where
he wanted them. Close.

One of the D-boys stripped down and climbed back into
the helicopter and fished out some extra SAW ammunition
for Waddell and Barton and found a pair of NODs, which
Waddell got. With the night vision on he could see all the
way out past the big intersection west and use the laser-
aiming device, which gave him a much better feeling. The
little green Fiat that had so ably served as cover across the
intersection for Nelson, Barton, Yurek, and Twombly was
shot full of holes. Waddell could hear the radio keep
promising to send out the rescue column. They were going

to be there in twenty minutes. Then, an hour later, in forty
minutes. After a while it got to be a joke. They're on their
way!' guys would say, and laugh. When the big column did
start to move across the city about a half hour before
midnight, with its tanks and armored personnel carriers,
trucks and Humvees, he could hear them miles away. The
convoy must have either been in terrific fighting or was
basically lighting up everything in their path, because
Waddell could track its movements by the sound of gunfire
and by the way the sky lit up over it. He didn't think about
the danger or the chances of being overrun and killed. He
thought about stupid things. He was scheduled to take a
physical fitness test the next day and wondered if, when
they got back, they'd still make him take it. He asked
Barton.

'Hey, Sergeant, am I going to have to take a P.T. test
tomorrow?'

Barton just shook his head.

Waddell thought about the Grisham novel he'd been
reading before they left. He couldn't wait to finish that
book. Wouldn't it be just his luck to get killed and never
finish the last few pages?

Every thirty minutes or so during the night Barton
would call over quietly, 'You okay?' If Waddell hadn't
heard from him in a while he'd call over to him, 'Sergeant,
you okay?' Like either of them was going to go to sleep.
Toward the middle of the night the shooting stopped and
during certain stretches the Little Birds weren't making
runs and it got very still. That's when he could hear the
relief column off in the distance. Waddell was one of the
few Rangers who had actually brought a canteen full of
water with him instead of stuffing his pouch with ammo, so
he handed over his canteen and it was passed around
greedily.

When are we gonna get the fuck out of here? Thai was
what Specialist Phipps wanted to know. He was in a small,
smoky, dusty back room with the rest of the wounded in
the building adjacent to the crashed helicopter, his back and
his right calf aching from shrapnel wounds, listening to the

sounds of shooting and blasts outside, wondering when
some wild -eyed Sammy was going to bust in and blow him
away. He had no idea what was going on. Specialist Gregg
Gould was in there with him. Gould has taken some
shrapnel to his butt, so he looked pretty ridiculous with his
bandaged ass stuck up in the air, talking on and on about
his girlfriend and how much he missed her and how he
couldn't wait to see her again when he got home... all of
which further depressed Phipps, who had no girlfriend.

'Everything is gonna be cool. Man, when we get out of
here I'm gonna drink me some beer,' Phipps said, trying to
move Gould off the topic. It didn't work.

Specialist Nick Struzik was in there. He'd been shot in
the right shoulder. Phipps had seen him bleeding up against
the stone wall outside earlier, not long before he'd been hit,
and remembered being shocked by it, as though somebody
had slapped him. Struzik was the first of his buddies he saw
injured. Staff Sergeant Mike Collins was in really bad
shape. He'd gotten tagged with a round in his right leg that
had shattered both fibula and tibia. The bullet had entered
just below the kneecap and come out the back side of his
leg, mangling it. Collins was in some serious pain and had
bled a lot. Phipps figured sadly that of Sergeant Collins
probably wouldn't make it. He couldn't believe they'd all
left their NODs behind. The NODs had always given them
that cocky we're -here -to-kick-ass feeling on previous night
missions because it's one hell of an advantage when you
can see the motherfuckers and they can't see you. Talk
about an awesome lesson learned. They all took sips from
the IV bags because they were so thirsty, just to wet their
mouths. It tasted slimy but at least it was wet. Then, after
the re -supply bird came in, they all got a few sips of water.

When it was clear they would be staying longer.
Sergeant Lamb took Sergeant Ron Galliette with him and
explored all the doors around the inner courtyard. Behind
one door they kicked open were two women, one very old,
and three babies. The younger woman wanted to leave. She
was just a teenager, maybe sixteen, and looked too tiny and
thin to have borne the baby she clutched so tightly. She

wore a brilliant blue robe with gold trim. The baby was
wrapped in the same colors. She kept moving toward the
door. Lamb told Sergeant Yurek to keep watch on her.
Every time Yurek looked away she would move to the door
again. He would hold up his rifle and she would sit back
down. Yurek tried to talk to her.

'Look, if we were going to do anything to hurt you we
would have done it by now, so just calm down,' he said, but
it was clear that she understood not a word.

Yurek talked to her anyway. He told her that she was
far safer for the time being indoors than out. All she had to
do was sit tight. As soon as they could leave, they'd be
gone. When she made another move to the door he used his
rifle to push her back into the corner.

'No, no, no! You need to stay here,' he said, trying to
frighten her into staying put. The woman argued back with
him with words he didn't understand.

There was a spigot on the wall with the top broken off,
and water was dripping steadily from it. Yurek collected
some in his dry canteen and handed it to her. She turned
her head and refused to take it from him.

'Be that way,' he said.

Lamb counted fifteen wounded, along with the body of
Super Six One copilot Donovan Briley. They needed more
space, so they placed a small charge on a wall in the back.
The stone and mortar were so flimsy that most walls you
could just push down, so this charge blew a nice big hole
about four feet high and two feet wide. It scared everyone
when it went off, particularly the Somali woman Yurek
was guarding. She went apoplectic. It even scared
Twombly, who'd set the thing. He thought he had a thirty-
second fuse on the charge and it was only twenty seconds,
so he'd jumped a foot when it blew. The new hole opened
into the room off the block's central courtyard, where
Perino had originally been, so DiTomasso's unit and
Perino's had finally, inadvertently, linked up. The shock of
the explosion sent more of the outside wall tumbling down
on Waddell and Barton out by the crashed helicopter.

Nelson was so deaf he didn't even hear the blast. His

ears just rang constantly, ever since Twombly had fired his
SAW right in his face. Nelson surveyed the carnage around
him and felt wildly, implausibly, lucky. How could he not
have been hit? It was hard to describe how he felt... it was
like an epiphany. Close to death, he had never felt so
completely alive. There had been split seconds in his life
when he'd felt death brush past, like when another fast-
moving car veered from around a sharp curve and just
missed hitting him head-on. On this day he had lived with
that feeling, with death breathing right in his face like the
hot wind from a grenade across the street, for moment after
moment after moment, for three hours or more. The only
thing he could compare it to was the feeling he found
sometimes when he surfed, when he was inside the tube of
a big wave and everything around him was energy and
motion and he was being carried along by some terrific
force and all he could do was focus intently on holding his
balance, riding it out. Surfers called it The Green Room.
Combat was another door to that room. A state of complete
mental and physical awareness. In those hours on the street
he had not been Shawn Nelson, he had no connection to the
larger world, no bills to pay, no emotional ties, nothing. He
had just been a human being staying alive from one
nanosecond to the next, drawing one breath after another,
fully aware that each one might be his last. He felt he
would never be the same. He had always known he would
die someday, the way anybody knows that they will die,
but now its truth had branded him. And it wasn't a
frightening or morbid thing. It felt more like a comfort. It
made him feel more alive. He felt no remorse about the
people he had shot and killed on the street. They had been
trying to kill him. He was glad he was alive and they were
dead.

When they moved the wounded into the bigger room
cleared out by Twombly's charge, Sergeant Collins had to
be passed through the hole on a stretcher. To get him
through they had to strap him down and tilt the stretcher
sideways. Collins protested as they readied him for this

move.

'Guys, I've got a broken leg!'

'I'm sorry,' Lamb told him. 'We've got to get you
through.'

Collins screamed with pain as they passed him to the
men on the other side.

They moved the body of Bull Briley back on a litter.
Nelson had seen Briley playing cards and laughing in the
hangar earlier that day. His head had been cut open in the
crash, sliced from ear to ear just beneath his chin. His body
was still warm and sweaty but it had turned a sickly gray.
The slit through his head was an inch wide and had stopped
bleeding. When they lifted his short, thick body on the litter
the top of his head flopped back grotesquely. Lamb
remembered seeing him running wearing Spandex shorts, a
powerful man. Jesus, this is a sad day. When they'd
worked him through the hole. Lamb climbed through and
pulled Briley's body off the litter and put it up against the
wall. The pilot's head hit the wall with a mushy thud that
sickened Lamb. He flattened him out so that when rigor set
in the body would not be folded at the waist.

Abdiaziz Ali Aden waited in darkness. The Rangers
moved through his house. Through the small opening the
helicopter had smashed in the roof he could see stars. The
Rangers had hung red lamps out on the trees and on top of
the houses. He had never seen lights like these. Gunfire
was still loud out in the streets, coining from all directions.
Helicopters swooped down low and rattled the rooftop with
their falling shells. He could hear the Americans inside
talking to the helicopters on their radios, directing their
fire.

He wasn't sure which was more dangerous, to stay in
the house with all of the Rangers on the other side of the
wall, or to risk being shot running away through the night.
He debated until the sound of the shooting died off, and
decided to leave.

He pulled himself up to the top of an outer wall and
jumped down to the alley. There were four people dead
where he landed, two men, a woman, and a child. He ran
and had only gone a short distance when a helicopter came

roaring down behind him and bullets kicked up the dirt and
bounced off the walls. He kept his head down and kept on
running and was surprised he was not hit.

Tim Wilkinson, the PJ, watched over the wounded men
off Captain Miller's courtyard across Marehan Road.
Wilkinson sat in the doorway to the yard with a handgun.
There were only occasional pops of gunfire. Now and then
a Little Bird would come roaring down and light up the sky
out the window.

Stebbins lit a match for a cigarette and Wilkinson,
startled, wheeled around with his handgun.

'Just lighting a butt. Sergeant.'

There was a moment of silence, then both men grinned,
thinking the same thought.

'I know, I know,' said Stebbins. 'It could be hazardous
to my health, right?'

12

Late in the night. Norm Hooten and the other D-boys,
teams led by Sergeants First Class John Boswell and Jon
Hale, along with a crew of Rangers headed by Sergeant
Watson, left Captain Steele's southernmost courtyard and
ducked into the narrow alley against its north wall, where
Fillmore's body had been placed late in the afternoon. They
had decided things were quiet enough for them to move as
Captain Miller had wanted, into the corner building at the
north end of their block. From there they could cover the
wide east/west alleyway that separated the two pinned-
down forces. The move left Steele in the courtyard with the
wounded and only four or five able-bodied men, but the
others weren't going far.

None of the Rangers was eager to go. One, a sergeant,
flat out refused to leave the courtyard, even after Steele
issued him a direct order. The man had just withdrawn. He
protested something had scratched his eye. He was told to
just get back and help with the wounded.

Sergeants Thomas and Watson followed the D-boys out

into the night, trailed by Floyd, Kurth, Collett, and several
other men. Floyd found a dead donkey on the side of the
street just outside the door and crouched down behind it.
The D-boys had gone up the alleyway and climbed into the
corner building through a window that was only about
three feet from the ground. By the time Floyd entered the
alley, they had moved Fillmore's body in through the
window.

Floyd tripped over something. He felt down and found
Fillmore's CAR-15. The dried blood on it flaked off in his
hands. He also found Fillmore's helmet with its headset
radio and some of his other gear. He was gathering it up
when Watson leaned out the window.

'What the fuck are you doing, Floyd? Quit playing. Get
your ass through this window!'

Floyd had a hard time climbing through carrying all that
gear. Watson gave him a pull and he landed in a space
much larger than the one where Captain Steele and the
others were. Fillmore's body was laid out in the middle in
the moonlight. The D-boys had flex-cuffed the dead
operator's arms down by his sides and his feet together to
make him easier to carry. Across the alley from the
window they had entered was another on the wall that
divided them from the wounded next door. They smashed
the shutters so they could more easily talk back and forth.

The D-boys set infrared strobes around the new space to
mark it for the helicopters. Floyd searched the courtyard
and found a full fifty-five-gallon drum under a dripping
spigot. He sniffed at it first to see if it was gasoline, then he
stuck his finger in and licked it. It was water. Kurth and the
rest of the men had been sternly warned about drinking the
local water. Nothing will make you sicker quicker, the docs
had said. Well, Kurth decided, to hell with the docs. If he
got sick, fine, he'd deal with that later. He filled his canteen
and swallowed just enough to wet his throat.

Then he and Sergeant Ramaglia, who was in the room
across the alley, began passing canteens back and forth on
a broomstick. Ramaglia rounded up all the empties he
could find, passing the stick through the holder on the

plastic cap that screwed on the top of the canteen. One by
one, Floyd filled the canteens from the big drum.

Then he and Collett sat for a long time and talked in
whispers. The D-boys had all the windows and doorways
covered, so there was nothing for them to do. The moon
was up, casting soft light over Fillmore's body in the
middle of the courtyard. Collett kept checking his watch.
Floyd poked around the courtyard, his pants flapping open
around his bare middle. On the ground next to his boot he
found a brand-new dustcase for an M-16.

’Fley, Collett, look at this 'ere.'

They'd been told all the Sammies had were beat-up old
weapons. This one still had the packing grease on it.

Collett was feeling bored. He couldn't believe it, bored
in a combat zone? How could that happen? The whole
scene was weird, too weird for belief. Nobody would ever
believe this shit back home. They listened to the gun runs
overhead and to the approaching roar of weaponry as the
giant rescue convoy fought its way in.

'Hey, Floyd.'

'Yeah.'

'I've got an idea.'

'What?'

'Wanna get a Combat Jack?'

Floyd couldn't believe his ears. Collett was suggesting
they both beat off. This was a running joke with the
Rangers, getting a 'jack' in exotic places. Guys would brag
about getting a Thailand Jack, or an Egypt Jack, or a C-5
Jack.

They both laughed.

'Collett, you're fuckin' high, man. Yer crazier 'n hell,'
Floyd said.

'No, man. Think about it. You would definitely be the
first kid on your block. How many people can say they got
one of those, huh?'

13

From overhead, the commanders watched the contested
neighborhood through infrared and heat-sensitive cameras
that sketched the blocks in monochrome. They could see
crowds of Somalis moving around the perimeter in groups
of a dozen or more, and kept hitting at them with
helicopters. Aidid's militia was trucking in fighters from
other parts of the city. The Little Birds made wall-rattling
gun runs throughout the night. One of the birds shot at a
Somali carrying an RPG who must have been toting extra
rounds on his back. They placed a seventeen-pound rocket
on him, which killed him and must have blown the extra
rounds, because he went up like a Roman candle. When the
chopper went back to refuel they found pieces of the man's
body pancaked on their windshield.

Sergeant Goodale, lying with his wounded butt cheek
off the ground, had resumed the job of coordinating gun
runs from inside Captain Steele's courtyard. He couldn't see
anything from where he sat, but he acted as a clearinghouse
for all the other radio operators calling in fire. He decided
which location needed the help most and relayed it up to
the command bird.

Late in the evening he got word that two very large
forces of Somalis were moving from south to north.

For the first time, Steele felt a stab of panic. Maybe
we're not going to make it out of here. If a determined
Somali force stormed the entrance to the courtyard, he and
his men would kill a lot of them but probably couldn't stop
them. He moved around making sure all of his men were
awake and ready. He was kicking himself now for having
let his men rope in without carrying bayonets, another item
called for in the tactical standing procedures but which they
had jettisoned to save weight. Who would have thought
they'd need bayonets? Steele poked his head in the back
room where Goodale was with the rest of the wounded, and
informed him with grim humor:

'If you see somebody coming through this doorway and

they're not yelling "Ranger! Ranger!" you go ahead and
shoot ’im because we're all out here dead.'

Goodale was shocked. The quiet had lulled him into a
false sense of safety. He reasoned with himself. Okay, I
might die here. I'd rather not but if I do, then that's what's
supposed to happen and there's not a damn thing I can do
about it. And he thought about what a terrible thing it was
to have turned over responsibility for his life, his very
existence, to the U.S. government, and that because of it he
might be breathing his last breaths in this shit-hole back
room, on this back street dirt floor in Mogadishu-fucking-
Somalia. He thought about how much he'd wanted to go to
war, to see combat, and then he thought about all those
great war movies and documentaries he'd seen about
battles. He knew he'd never see another of those films and
feel the same way about it. People really get killed. He
found the best way to accept his predicament was to just
assume he was dead already. He was dead already. He just
kept on doing his job.

One block up. Sergeant Yurek was now positioned at a
window peering east down the crash alley. It was sketched
in soft shades of blue, the pale earth of the alley, the
thickets of cactus and a wall about eight feet high with a
fence just beyond it, no more than two car-lengths away.
Yurek tried to sit as quietly as he could, figuring he'd hear
somebody coming in before he'd see them. Then he saw the
fence shake. He brought his M-16 up to his shoulder and
drew a bead on the top of the fence as first one, and then
another Sammy lightly pulled themselves up and then
squatted on the adjacent wall, evidently looking for a place
to jump down. This is getting too easy. One of the men
spotted Yurek just before the sergeant squeezed the trigger.
He had just enough time to begin a shout and reach for his
weapon before Yurek’ s rounds blew him and the other
backward off the wall. One of the men's weapons dropped
on Yurek’s side. He heard a commotion on the other side
and then it was quiet again.

Looking out on the main road, Sergeant Howe still felt
boxed in. He’d been stuck in a bad position, and for the first

time he began to feel like he might not make it out of here
alive.

The Somalis had been sending three- to six-man teams
down the alleys, probing their positions, trying to figure out
exactly where they were. Howe could see these men and
knew exactly what they were doing. One put his weapon
around the corner and fired toward Miller's position across
the street, then waited, hoping to see muzzle flashes to
guide his shooting. When he saw none he edged around the
corner. Howe decided to let him move well down the street
in front of his position before shooting him, because if he
shot the man and didn't kill him, he could return to point
out Howe's position. Then they'd be a fat target for an RPG.
Just as he prepared to fire two D-boys across the road did
and dropped the man. He did not get back up. At the same
time they lit up a group of five Somalis preparing to move
around the corner. Wounded, these men dragged
themselves back up the street.

The quiet was in some ways more unnerving than the
early din of battle. It was hard not to imagine large groups
of Sammies forming up just around the corners. If there
was a sudden rush from a large enough group, Howe felt,
they could all be overrun. He began preparing a checklist
for himself, the steps he would take in his final fight. He
was going to take as many of them with him as was
humanly possible. He still had six or seven magazines left
for his CAR-15, along with his .45 and some shotgun
ammo. He would shoot his rifle until it ran out of ammo,
then the shotgun, then his pistol, and finally he would use
his knife. Hopefully he'd find an enemy weapon to pick up.

Howe called together his team and told them to hold
their fire on any Somalis until they were fully committed
down the street, as he had been doing. They were all to
conserve ammo, pick their shots with care. All of the other
operators would radio whenever they used their weapons,
telling each other what they shot at and where, and whether
they hit where they aimed. It helped keep track of emerging
trouble spots. The night had reached a critical juncture.

The Little Birds took care of the two large elements of

approaching Somalis. Goodale heard one of the helicopters
come screaming down Marehan Road and after the rattle of
its guns and the satisfying boom! of a rocket, he shouted,
’Make that one large element!'

Another gun run eliminated the second threat.

Sergeant Bray, the air force combat controller at
Miller's position, asked for a gun run on the two -story
house adjacent to their courtyard. The building overlooked
them and had a separate entrance around the corner. If
there were Somalis inside that house, they'd be able to
shoot right down at them. The building was adjacent to the
Delta command post courtyard and no more than twenty
yards in front of Howe's position, which meant hitting it
from the air without hurting any of the Americans on the
ground would take one hell of a shot. Howe's men marked
the building with lasers for the Little Bird pilot, who
radioed down to ask if they were sure they wanted his
miniguns firing that close. From the air, it was like trying
to paint a thin line between two friendly positions.

'Keep your heads down,' the pilot warned.

His fire was right on the mark. Watching the miniguns
tear the house apart, Howe turned to one of his teammates
and said, 'Don't try this at home!'

Some time later, two Somalis came walking down the
middle of the street as though out for a stroll. The moon
was high now and lit the scene about half as bright as a
cloudy afternoon. The men were spaced about forty yards
apart. Howe watched the first walk down past his position.
He tried to put his infrared cover on his gun light, and for a
moment accidentally shone the white light out the door. He
watched the first man double back, looking for where the
flash had originated. Howe pulled out his .45. He didn't
want to shoot the man with his rifle, because there were D-
boys in the building directly across the street, and the
bullets would likely pass right through him and on toward
them. He also knew the muzzle flash from either rifle or
handgun would be clearly visible to the second man. Howe
radioed for one of his men to shoot the guy as soon as he
passed out of the perimeter. As the man moved on, one of

the men across the street shot him in the right lower back.
The man spun around with a startled look and was
immediately hit by four more bullets that knocked him flat.
Howe was disgusted that it had taken so many rounds to
drop the man. The second Somali walked down the same
way minutes later and was also shot dead.

By midnight the rescue convoy was getting close. The
men pinned down listened to the low rumble of nearly one
hundred vehicles, tanks, APCs (armored personnel
carriers), and Humvees. The thunderclap of its guns edged
ever closer. After a while, the rhythm of its shooting
sounded like an extended drum solo in a rock song, very
heavy metal. It was the wrathful approach of the United
States of America, footsteps of the great god of red, white,
and blue. It was the best fucking sound in the world.

N.S.D.Q.

1

Michael Durant heard the guns of the giant rescue
convoy roaring into the city. The injured Black Hawk pilot
was flat on his back bound with a dog chain on a cool tile
floor in a small octagonal room with no windows. Air,
moonlight, and sounds filtered in through a pattern of
crosses cut high in the upper third of the concrete walls. He
tasted dust in the air and he smelled of blood and
gunpowder and sweat. The room had no furniture and only
one door, which was closed.

When the angry mob had closed over him, he thought
he was going to die. He still did not know the fate of the
three other men on his crew, copilot Ray Frank and crew
chiefs Tommy Field and Bill Cleveland, or of the two D-
boys who had tried to protect them. Durant did not know
those men's names.

He had passed out when the mob carried him off. He'd
felt himself leaving his body, watching the scene from
outside himself, and at the worst of the chaos and terror it
had calmed him. But the feeling hadn't lasted. He'd come to
when he was thrown into the back of a flatbed truck with a
rag tied around his head, surprised to still be alive and
expecting at any moment to die. He was driven around. The
truck would go and then stop, go and then stop. He guessed
it was about three hours after the crash when they'd brought
him to this place, removed the rag, and wrapped his hands
with the chain.

What Durant didn't know was that he had been taken
from the first group of Somalis who seized him. Yousef
Dahir Mo'alim, the neighborhood militia leader who had
spared him from the attacking crowd after it had
overwhelmed and killed the others, had intended to carry
Durant back to his village and turn him over to leaders of
the Habr Gidr. As they'd left the crash site, however, they
were stopped by a better-armed band of maverick
mooryan, who had a technical with a big gun in back. This
group considered the injured pilot not a war prisoner to be

swapped for captured clan leaders, but a hostage. They
knew somebody would pay money to get him back.
Mo'alim’s men were outnumbered and outgunned, so they'd
reluctantly given Durant up. This was the way things were
in Mogadishu. If Aidid wanted the pilot back, he would
have to fight for him, or pay.

Durant's right leg ached where the femur was broken
and he could feel the ooze of blood inside his pants where
one end of the broken bone had pushed through his skin in
the manhandling. It did not hurt that badly. He didn't know
if that was good or bad. He was still alive, so the bone had
not punctured an artery. His back was what really bothered
him. He figured he'd crushed a vertebrae in the crash.

He managed to work one hand free of the chain. He was
sweating so his hand slid out easily when he relaxed it. It
gave him his first sense of triumph. He had fought back in
some small way. He could wipe the dirt from his nose and
eyes and straighten his broken leg somewhat and get a little
more comfortable. Then he wrapped his hand back into the
chain so that he still appeared to be bound.

At one point he heard several armored vehicles roll
right past outside. He heard shooting and thought he was
about to be rescued, or killed. There was a furious firefight.
He heard the low pounding of a Mark 19 automatic grenade
launcher and the explosion of what sounded like TOW
missiles. He had never been at the receiving end of a
barrage and he was shaken by how powerful and
frightening it was. The explosions came closer and closer.
The Skinnies holding him grew more and more agitated.
They were all young men with weapons that looked rusty
and poorly maintained. He listened to them shouting at
each other, arguing. Several times one or more barged into
the room to threaten him. One of the men spoke some
English. He said, 'You kill Somalis. You die Somalia,
Ranger.'

Durant couldn't understand the rest of their words but
he gathered they would shoot him before letting the
approaching Americans take him back.

He listened to the pitched battle with hope and fear.

Then the sounds marched off and faded. He felt
disappointed, despite the danger. They had been so close!

Then a gun barrel poked around the door. Just the black
barrel. Durant caught the motion in the corner of his eye
and turned his head just as it flamed and the room rang
with a shot. He felt the impact in his left shoulder and his
left leg. Eyeing his shoulder, he saw blood and the back
end of a bullet protruding from his skin. It evidently had hit
the floor first and had ricocheted into him without enough
force to fully penetrate. A bit of shrapnel had punctured his
leg.

He slid his hand from the chain and tried to wrench the
bullet from his shoulder. It was an automatic move, a
reflex, but when his fingers touched it they sizzled and he
winced with pain. It was still hot. It had burned his
fingertips.

He thought: Lesson learned; wait until it cools down.

2

Word of the big fight in Mogadishu reached
Washington early Sunday. General Garrison had received a
call several hours into the battle from General Wayne
Downing, an old friend who was commander in chief of
U.S. Special Operations Command. Downing had come to
his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after a
morning jog, and had decided to ring up his friend in
Mogadishu to see how things were going. This was about
two hours into the fight. Garrison quickly summarized
what had happened so far: There had been a successful
mission, two of Aidid's lieutenants and a slew of lesser
lights had been captured, but two helicopters were down,
lots of lead was flying, and the boys were still in the thick
of it. Downing asked Garrison if there was anything he
could do right away, and then got off the phone. The last
thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk
jockey thirteen thousand miles away looking over his
shoulder.

Downing spread the word. National Security Adviser
Tony Lake was given the bare outline at the White House
that morning, two Aidid lieutenants captured, two
helicopters down, rescue operation underway. Lake was
more preoccupied just then with events in Moscow, where
Russian President Boris Yeltsin was fending off a right-
wing coup d'etat. President Clinton did not mention
Mogadishu at a press conference that morning, which took
place at the same time Task Force Ranger was pinned
down around the first crash site. Clinton and the rest of
America remained ignorant of the drama in faraway
Mogadishu. After the press conference, the president flew
to San Francisco for a planned two -day speaking tour.

Garrison's move back into the city came with crushing
force. If Aidid wanted to play, the U.S. Army would play.
Centered around twenty-eight Malaysian APCs and four
Pakistani tanks, the convoy numbered almost a hundred
vehicles and was nearly two miles long, with enough
firepower to blaze their own roads if necessary. Lieutenant
Colonel Bill David was given esponsibility for quickly
assembling this force at the New Port, about two miles up
the coast from the Ranger base.

David's reaction, upon being handed this assignment,
was, You've got to be kidding me. His own men, two 10th
Mountain Division rifle companies, three hundred men
strong, had amassed at the airport. David's Charlie
Company, the 'Tigers,' had taken some light casualties at
the K-4 circle ambush trying to get to Durant's crash site,
but they were otherwise fresh and eager to join the fight.
They'd been joined by Alpha Company, under the
command of Captain Drew Meyerowich. The armor would
be nice, but what was David going to do with Malaysians
and Pakistanis? He huddled with General Gile, second in
command of the 10th. They agreed that once their nen
linked up with the foreign troops at the New Port, they
would ask the Malaysians to take their own infantry out of
the APCs and fill them with American troops. It would be,
Thank you very much, we'll take your vehicles and drivers,
but we don't need your men. David could sense how that

was going to go over.

'Do these guys speak English?' he asked.

Most of the officers spoke some, Gile said, and there
would be liaison officers to help smooth the process.

David had walked out of the JOC with his head
spinning. The forty-year-old career army officer (West
Point, Class of 75) from St Louis, Missouri, had just been
handed the assignment of a lifetime. He had been in
Mogadishu for two months, commanding a battalion of
peacekeepers there to back up the UN forces. He'd never
been particularly happy about the presence of Garrison's
Task Force Ranger, which had flown in and begun its own
secret missions independent of the force structure already
in place. Regular army units both admire and resent the
elite special forces. The conventional divisions don't get
nearly as much money to train, or the choice assignments.
Watching Task Force Ranger move into Mogadishu and
steal their thunder was not easy for the proud officers and
men of the 10th, which has its own distinguished battle
history. Since the daring mission had gone bad, it was easy
to regard it as foolhardy - what were they doing in Aidid's
notorious Black Sea neighbourhood in broad daylight?
Where was the reserve force? Now David and his men,
sometimes scorned by the elite forces, were charged with
pulling Delta's and the Rangers' asses out of the fire.

He had to move his men, along with what was now
called the 'Cook Platoon,' volunteers combined with the
remnants of the original assault forces, north to the New
Port, negotiate with the Malaysians and Pakistanis, develop
a plan, and then allow for his subordinates to disseminate it
up and down the giant convoy. Then he had to steer them
out into the city and keep it all together in the dark as they
battled their way to the two crash sites.

While the commanders were working up this plan, the
Rangers assigned to the rescue column fretted and paced.
Their buddies were still trapped out there! Those who had
already been in the fight knew how terrible the battle had
become. The uninjured had helped move their wounded
and dead buddies from the lost convoy's Humvees and

trucks to the field hospital, where Dr Marsh and his team of
doctors and nurses were furiously working to save their
lives. The Rangers known to be dead were Pilla, Cavaco,
and Joyce. In bad shape were Blackburn, Ruiz, Adalberto
Rodriguez, and the Delta operator Griz Martin. There were
dozens more injured. It was a ghastly scene. Even those
soldiers who had not been hurt were so blood-splattered
they looked injured.

Some of the medical aides approached Sergeant
Eversmann, who had commanded Chalk Four and come
out with his men on the lost convoy. Eversmann was
unhurt, but most of the men on his chalk had been hit. On
the ride out, he had been sandwiched on the back of a
Humvee with the wounded, so his uniform was caked with
blood. As he stood by now, helping to unload them, two
medics grabbed him and began cutting off his pants.

'Leave me alone!' he said. 'I’m okay!'

They paid him no mind. Some of the men who were
really wounded protested in the same way.

'Look, I'm fine. Work on them!’ he shouted, pointing to
men who were waiting for attention.

Eversmann was losing it. He’d been through a lot this
day, and just the sight of all this blood, and all those
mangled men - his men! - dismayed him. It was hard to
stay even. He was venting on the nurses and medics when
one, an older man, pulled him aside.

'Sergeant, what's your name?'

'Matt Eversmann.’

'Well, Matt, listen. You need to calm down.'

'Roger.'

'We are going to take care of these guys. They're going
to be fine. You just need to calm down.'

'I am calm,' shouted Eversmann, who clearly was not. 'I
just want you to take care of them!'

'What these guys need right now from you is to see you
being a stand-up guy. Don't let them see you being nervous
because that just makes them nervous.'

Eversmann realized he was making a fool of himself.

'Okay,' he said.

He stood helplessly for a few moments, turned, and
walked slowly back to the hangar. It was hard to remove
himself from the emotions of the fight. He felt himself in a
kind of aftershock. Having to identify the dead was
chilling. Casey Joyce was one of his men. He'd last seen
Joyce when he ran off with the litter carrying Blackburn
back to the convoy. He'd lost track of him after that. Now
he saw his face pale and stretched with the life drained out.
During the fight there hadn't been time to react to the terror
or even to recoil at what was grotesque. Now it all sank in.

It helped when Lieutenant Colonel McKnight asked
him to reinforce perimeter security at the airport. There
were fears that with all the fighting, Aidid might try
storming the base. So Eversmann packed his brooding
away and went to work. He still had six men from his chalk
who were able.

The stitches on Specialist Sizemore's elbow, where he
had earlier cut off his cast to join the fight, were open and
bleeding, but he waved the nurses away. He didn't want to
be sidelined again. He was haunted by images of his
buddies out there in the city under siege, waiting for him.
He was angry, and like many of his Ranger buddies, he
wanted revenge. He thought about Stebbins, who had taken
his place on the bird, and was infuriated that the company
clerk was out there in his place. He had to get out there.
What was holding things up? Sizemore was pacing around
the waiting Humvees when a D-boy approached and asked,
'Anybody here know Alphabet?'

Sizemore said he did. They walked together through the
gate and past the hospital tent to the fire station. Behind it
the minibunker of sand-bags built by Sergeant Rymes was
now covered by a white sheet. The sergeant lifted the sheet.
Inside was Kowalewski's body with the RPC still
embedded in his torso.

'Is this Kowalewski?’ the D-boy asked.

Sizemore nodded, or he thought he did. He was
stunned. The D-boy asked him again.

'Is this Kowalewski?'

'Yes, that's him.’

Lanky Steve Anderson tried to motivate himself for
going back out. He had gone out the first time reluctantly.
The events of the day so far had stirred up a mess of strong
feelings, but anger predominated. Until today Anderson
had been as gung ho as the rest of the guys, but now, seeing
all the dead and wounded, he just felt used and stupid. His
life was being put at risk and he was being thrust into a
situation where he had to shoot and kill people in order to
survive... and it was hard to see why. How could some
politicians in Washington take men like him and put them
in such a position, guys who are young, naive, patriotic,
and eager to do the right thing, and take advantage of all
that for no good reason?

He listened to one of his buddies, Private Kevin
Matthews, who had been in the small Humvee column
when Pilla was killed and had gone back out with the first
rescue convoy. Matthews was going on about this guy he
had killed out on the street a few hours before, about how
the man shook as five, ten, fifteen rounds slammed into
him, and it sounded to Anderson like Matthews was
bragging. Except, as he listened more, he saw that the
young private was actually upset and was going on because
he just needed to talk about what had happened. Matthews
was trembling. He wanted to be reassured that he had done
the right thing.

'What else could you do?' Anderson said.

Anderson had just talked to his parents the night before
back in Illinois, and he'd told them everything was okay,
nothing was happening, and probably nothing would. And
now, this.

An effort was launched to identify men who could drive
the five-ton trucks wearing NODs. The night vision
goggles blocked all peripheral vision and sharply
foreshortened the view. It took time to get used to driving
with them. Specialist Peter Squeglia, the company armorer,
had some experience riding a motorcycle wearing NODs,
so one of the lieutenants asked him to take a truck.

'Sir, if you're telling me to drive it, I'll drive it. But I've
never driven a truck before.'

The idea of grinding gears and stalling out in the middle
of a gunfight, where one stalled vehicle can hold up an
entire column, or, worse, get left behind, terrified Squeglia.
The lieutenant made a face, and walked off to find
someone else. Squeglia went back to collecting weapons
off the dead and wounded. Later he would clean and repair
them. For now he just piled them next to his cot, a heap of
blood-smeared steel. The lieutenant's expression left
Squeglia feeling deflated and guilty. Everybody was
scared. Some guys were frantic to join the fight while
others were looking for a way to avoid going out. Squeglia
was somewhere in the middle. After what he had seen of
the lost convoy, part of him felt like going out into that city
was like committing suicide. It was crazy, but they had to
do it. They were going to load Rangers on the back of
flatbed trucks lined with sandbags that weren't going to
stop a damn thing, and roll them out into the streets where
every one of these skinny Somali motherfuckers was trying
to kill them, and for what? At least the Malaysians had
armored vehicles. Squeglia was going to go. He was going
to do his part, but he wasn't going to do anything foolish,
like decide to learn how to drive a big truck in the middle
of a firefight.

When it came time to climb aboard, Squeglia picked up
his pistol and his CAR-15, which he had rigged with an M-
203 grenade launcher. He made sure he got in the truck
after most of the others. He figured the safest spot in the
flatbed, if anyplace was safe, was toward the rear where the
spare tire and muffler came up. He crouched down behind
that. Maybe it would stop something. The sandbags
certainly wouldn't.

Just before the convoy feft the base. Specialist Chris
Schleif dashed back into the hangar, rooted through
Squeglia's pile of weapons, and fished out Dominic Pilla's
M-60 and ammo. The gun and ammo can were still slick
with Pilla's blood and brain matter. Schleif ditched his own
weapon and boarded the Humvee with Pilla's.

'He didn't get a chance to kill anybody with it,' Schleif
explained to Specialist Brad Thomas, who like Schleif was

heading back out into the city for the third time. 'I'm going
to do it for him.'

It was 9.30 p.m when the rescue force left the airport
and drove north to the New Port to link up with the
Malaysians and Pakistanis. Most of the Rangers, all of the
D-boys, SEALs, and air force combat controllers who
hadn't been killed or injured, and both companies of the
10th Mountain Division made up a force of nearly five
hundred men. Waiting for them there were the Malaysian
APCs, German-made 'Condors,' rolling steel Dumpsters
painted snow white with a driver in front and a porthole in
the back for a gunner. Each was built to hold about six
men. The Paki tanks were American-made M-48s. The
armor was lined up and ready to go when the long convoy
of trucks and Humvees arrived, but coordinating movement
of this strange collection of vehicles - Lieutenant Colonel
David called it a 'gagglefuck' - was going to take more
time. He plunged right into it. With a map spread out on the
hood of his Humvee, and with soldiers gathered around
holding up flashlights to illuminate it, he began
improvising a plan. To David's relief, most of the
Malaysian and Pakistani officers spoke English. There was
little argument or discussion. The Malaysian officers at
first balked at removing their infantry from the APCs, but
relented when David agreed to let each vehicle retain a
Malaysian driver and gunner. The various units did not
have radios that were compatible, so American radios had
to be placed with all the vehicles. They worked out fire
control procedures, steps to prevent friendly fire incidents,
call signs, the route, and a host of other critical issues.

David felt a sense of urgency, but not an overriding
one. He knew there were critically injured soldiers at the
first crash site for whom every minute was important. On
the other hand, this convoy was it. If they screwed up,
failed to reach the crash site, and got broken up or bogged
down, who was going to come in and rescue them? If one
or two soldiers died waiting it would be tragic, but rescuing
the other ninety-seven men, and getting his own in and out
safely, had to be the priority.

To the Rangers and the 10th Mountain Division soldiers
eyeing the Condors for the first time, they looked like
caskets on wheels. Choosing between the APCs and the
sandbagged five-ton trucks was like choosing your poison:
You could get riddled with bullets in the back of a flatbed
or toasted by a grenade dropped into the turret or poked
through the skin of an APC. The men reluctantly began to
board the Condors an hour or so after they'd arrived at the
New Port. There were only little peepholes in the sides, so
most of the force would be riding blind. The idea of being
driven out by Malaysians didn’t make them feel any better.

As the hours crept by without action, the Rangers
stewed with impatience. As they saw it, they were being
held back by this slow-moving, by-the-book regular army
unit that didn't fully appreciate the urgency of the situation.
Further back in the column it looked like nothing was being
done. Some of the 10th Mountain guys were dozing in the
back of vehicles. Sleeping! Ranger Sergeant Raleigh Cash
couldn't contain himself. His buddies were dying out in the
city and these guys were taking naps? Why the hell weren't
they moving? He had made peace with himself riding out
with the cook convoy in that aborted effort to rescue
Durant and his crew. If he was going to die today, so be it.
The pull of loyalty felt stronger in him than the will to
survive. He had thought it through methodically. He was
wearing body armor, so if he got shot, it would probably be
to the arms or legs and there were medics who would take
care of him. It would hurt, but he had been hurt before. If
he was shot in the head, then he would die. He wouldn't
feel any pain. His life would just be over. Just like that. The
end. His friends would take care of his family for him. If he
died then that was what was meant to happen.

When word came that Smith was dead, that he had bled
out waiting for rescue, Cash lost it. He vented his anger and
impatience on a 10th Mountain Division officer. He told
the officer that before the Rangers had gotten saddled with
his unit they'd had no trouble finding the fight.

'Look, we're not holding things up,' the officer
protested. 'We’re ready to go just as much as you are. You

have to have a little faith in your leaders.'

'It's taking too long,' Cash said, his voice rising with
anger. 'My friends are dying out there! We need to get
going now!'

Cash's platoon leader came over and quieted him.

'Look, we all want to get going.’

By about 1 1 p.m., David had the 'gagglefuck' set to go,
and was feeling pretty good about it. He regarded the
organizational effort as one of his major life
accomplishments. The Paki tanks would lead the convoy
out into the city. Behind them, each platoon would have
four APCs interspersed with trucks and Humvees. The
QRF's Cobra gunships would provide air support. They'd
roll out to a staging point on National Street, then one half
of the force would steer south toward Durant's Super Six
Four crash site and the other would push north to Wolcott's
Super Six One , where the bulk of the task force was pinned
down. They had cornmo links established, liaison officers
dispersed throughout the convoy... they were good to go.

Then one of the Pakistani officers ran up. His
commander objected to the tanks leading the convoy. This
was a problem because tanks were needed to plow through
the formidable barricades (ditches, abandoned shells of cars
and trucks, heaps of stone, burning tires and debris) the
Somalis had erected to block most of the main roads
leading out of the UN facilities. Since the New Port was
home base for the Pakis, and they were the ones who had
proposed the route to the holding point, a compromise was
reached. The tanks would lead the way out to the K-4
circle, then fall back to the midfront of the column.

Then new problems surfaced. It was easy to see how,
with enough commanders, a battle could be debated into
defeat. After conferring with their superiors, the
Malaysians said they had been ordered to keep their APCs
on the main roads, for the same reason that Garrison had
earlier judged Mogadishu the wrong place to fight with
armor. It was hard for tanks and APCs to maneuver in the
city's complex web of narrow streets and alleys. The big
vehicles were vulnerable when they moved slowly through

streets where the enemy could creep up close or drop
grenades down from rooftops and trees, or fire armor-
piercing rounds at close range.

David got back out of his Humvee and huddled with the
officers again. He told Captain Meyerowich, 'Look, Drew,
here's the situation. I need for your company to lead us out.'

The Pakistanis agreed to lead the convoy as far as the
K-4 circle, which was the borderline of Aidid's turf. At that
point Meyerowich's company, most of them riding in the
Condors, would pull through and take the lead.

It was now 1 1.23 p.m

3

As he heard the guns of the giant convoy approaching,
Captain Steele knew this was the most dangerous time of
the night. The moon was high and shooting in the
neighborhood around the first crash site had all but
stopped. There were a few pops every once in a while. The
air had cleared of smoke and gunpowder. Now there was
just that musky stink of Somalia, the trace of desert dust in
the air, and the slight aftertaste of the iodine pills in their
canteens. Sammies would still inexplicably wander right
into the middle of their perimeter up the street. The D-boys
would let them walk until they reached a cross-fire zone
and then drop them with a few quick shots. Every once in a
while the Little Birds would rumble in and unleash a rocket
and spray of minigun fire. But now the only noise that
concerned Steele was the intensifying thunder of guns as
the rescue column moved closer to their position. With that
much shooting, with two jumpy elements of soldiers about
to link up in a confusing city in darkness, the biggest threat
to his pinned-down men were their rescuers.

- Romeo Six Four [Harrell], this is Juliet Six Four
[Steele], Flow we gonna keep from running out of the
building and getting smoked?

- They're looking for your position to be marked with an
IR strobe. If there's any doubt in your mind, flash a red

desert flashlight at them.

Up the street, Captain Miller had his own concerns.

- Okay , this taskforce is made up of Malaysians and
who, over ?

- Malaysians and Americans. They have Rangers with
them, over.

Miller added hopefully:

- Okay, so every vehicle should have some type of
NODs so they can ID the strobe, over?

- That was the instruction sent back, over.

Then, a few minutes later, the command helicopter
reassured Miller.

- Yeah, they're moving. The lead element has night
vision devices so they should be able to pick up your IR
strobe, Scotty, over.

Miller was also informed that members of the Delta
unit, including Major James Nixon, John Macejunas, Matt
Rierson, and Chuck Esswein, would be leading the column
in, which to him and the other Delta team leaders was an
enormous relief.

The rescue convoy was coming from the south. By the
sound of it, they were moving along the same route the
Rangers and D-boys had taken that afternoon, east from the
Olympic Hotel, which meant they would reach Steele's
position first. They were coming steadily but slowly, and
from the sound of it they were just shooting at everything.
It was about ten minutes before two in the morning.
Without the NODs nobody could see that hr down the
street. They just had to hunker down and wait and hope the
convoy did not come blasting its way down the middle of
their street.

- Romeo Six Four, this is Juliet Six Four. We're going to
put IR strobes out in front of the buildings here. We plan on
throwing a red Chemlite as well to mark for casualties. If
we can have the APCs pull in as close to those red clients
as possible that will facilitate the loading of the casualties,
over.

- Roger, but you better be real careful with those red
Chemlites or the bad guys will start shooting at them, over.

- Okay, but you're saying all the guys will have NODs,
right?

- They've got people in the lead element with NODs and
they should be homing in on your IR strobes, over.

It was tense. Nearly an hour had gone by since Steele
had been told the convoy would reach him in twenty
minutes.

- Romeo, this is Juliet. 1 understand now they may have
turned north. The ground reaction force turned north. Do
they have an ETA at this location?

- No, they are moving slowly, taking their time. It is
going to take them a while, Mike. Probably fifteen to twenty
minutes based on where I think they are, over.

- Okay. We are fairly secure here. I think the Little Bird
runs dampened the rebels' spirits.

Word came from the command helicopter at about two
o’clock.

- Okay, start getting ready to get out of there, but keep
your heads down. Now is a bad time.

- Roger, copy. Positions are marked at this time. We are
ready to move, said Steele.

- Roger, they are going to be coming in with heavy
contact so be real careful.

- You better believe it, over.

’We're about to link up,' Steele radioed Perino. 'I want
everybody to back up out of the courtyards, and to stay
away from the doors and windows.'

So the Rangers drew back like hermit crabs into their
shells, and listened. They were all terrified of the 10th
Mountain Division, whom they regarded as poorly trained
regular army schmoes, just a small step removed from
utterly incompetent civilianhood.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Twenty
minutes passed. Then another radio call from the command
bird.

-Just to give you an update. They are still at that U-turn
off. They had a little bit of a direction problem amongst
themselves. They should be moving now. Will let you know
as soon as they start rolling northbound.

Perino called Captain Steele. 'Where are they?' he
asked.

Steele said, 'Any minute now.'

Both men laughed.

4

Captain Drew Meyerowich was with the Delta
operators who were leading his portion of the rescue
convoy toward Steele and Miller's position. It had been a
pitched battle much of the way in. Two of the Malaysian
drivers had taken a wrong turn and driven about thirty of
Meyerowich's men off in the wrong direction. They'd been
ambushed and caught up in a severe firefight, and one of
their men. Sergeant Cornell Houston, had been mortally
wounded.

For all his careful planning. Specialist Squeglia ended
up in a Humvee. The banging of gunfire was constant, most
if it coming from the convoy, which stretched so far in both
directions Squeglia could not see the front or rear. No one
had lights on, but muzzle flashes and explosions lit up the
whole line. In the reflected light he saw two dead donkeys
by the side of the road, still strapped to carts. The air was
filled with diesel fumes, and through the open side window
of the Humvee Squeglia smelled the gunpowder from his
weapon mingled with the burning tires and trash and the
general pungent, rotten smell of Somalia itself. He was out
in it now.

In a sudden volley of gunfire an RPG bounced off the
hood. The explosion a few feet away sounded like
somebody had dropped an empty Dumpster off a roof.
Squeglia felt the concussion like a blow to the inside of his
chest, and then smelled smoke. Everybody had ducked at
the blast.

'Holy shit, what was that?' shouted Specialist David
Eastabrooks, who was driving.

'Jesus,' said Sergeant Richard Lamb, who was in the
front passenger seat. 'I think I've been hit.'

'Where you hit?' Squeglia asked.

'In the head.'

'Oh, Jesus.'

One of the men in the Humvee fished out a red light
flashlight, and they shined it on Lamb. He had a trickle of
blood running down his face and a neat hole, a small one,
right in the middle of his forehead.

'I think I'm okay,' Lamb said. 'I'm still talking to you.'

He wrapped a bandage around his head. Doctors would
later determine that a piece of shrapnel had lodged between
the frontal lobes of his brain, missing vital tissues by
fractions of an inch in either direction. He was all right. It
felt like he had just banged his head. It hurt lots worse
minutes later when he took a bullet to his right pinkie,
which left the tip of it hanging by a piece of skin. Squeglia
could see the bone of his finger jutting from the mangled
flesh. Lamb just swore and stuck the fingertip back on,
wrapped it with a piece of duct tape, and continued
working his radio.

All the way out from the base, Specialist Dale Sizemore
was shooting. He'd cut the cast off his arm to join the fight,
and at last he was in it. Night vision gave him and the other
men on this massive column a tremendous advantage over
the Somalis. Sizemore spread out on his stomach in the
back of the Humvee just looking for people to shoot. When
there weren't people he shot at windows and doorways.
Most of the time he couldn't see whether he'd hit anybody
or not. The NODs severely restricted peripheral vision. He
didn't want to know, really. He didn't want to start thinking
about it.

At one point a spray of sparks flew up in his face. He
turned his head to discover a fist-sized hole in the Humvee
wall just inches from his head. He hadn't felt a thing. When
an RPG hit one of the trucks ahead, men came running
down the street looking for space on the Humvees as
tracers flew. One, Specialist Erik James, a medic,
approached Sizemore's open back hatch carrying a Kevlar
blanket.

'You got room?' he asked. He looked dazed and scared.

Sizemore and Private Brian Conner moved over to
make a space for him.

'Just get in here and keep that blanket over your head
and you'll be all right,' said Sizemore. He figured it was
always a good idea to have a medic close by. James felt
Sizemore had just saved his life.

Specialist Steve Anderson was in a Humvee near
Sizemore's in the column. He was in the back on the
driver's side with his eyes pressed to the night-vision
viewfinder on his SAW. Whenever the column stopped,
which was often, everyone was expected to pile out and
pull security. The first time they stopped Anderson
hesitated. He didn't want to stick his legs out of the car. He
had just started skydiving lessons at home before this
deployment, and now, suddenly, he felt immobilized by the
particular fear of being shot in the legs - he'd received a
minor injury to his legs on an earlier mission. Back home
he had just made his first freefall jump. It had been such a
thrill. What if he got his foot shot off and could never jump
again? Anderson reluctantly forced himself out on the
street. At one stop he and Sizemore stood for a long time, it
seemed like hours, watching the windows of a three-story
building for some sign of a shooter. They had been there
for a time when Anderson noticed a dent and scrape on the
roof of the Humvee right next to them. A round had
ricocheted off it.

'Did you notice that before?' he asked Sizemore.

Sizemore hadn't. It hadn't been there when they got out
either. Which meant a bullet had passed between them,
missing them both by inches, without their even knowing
it.

That was the way Anderson felt most of the time.
Totally in the dark. He saw tracers and there were times the
gunfire was so loud the night seemed ready to split at the
seams, but he could never seem to tell where it was coming
from, or find anyone to shoot. Sizemore, on the other hand,
was going through ammunition as fast as he could load his
weapon. Anderson was in awe of his friend's confidence
and selflessness, and felt both inspired and diminished by

it.

Sizemore unloaded what must have been a full drum of
ammo at the front of a building about fifty feet away. When
he was done, Anderson could see rounds glowing and
smoldering from the ground where he had been shooting,
which meant he must have hit something. When rounds hit
the ground or street or a building, they deflected off in
other directions. But when they hit flesh, they would glow
for a few moments.

'Didn't you see them?' Sizemore asked Anderson. 'There
was a whole bunch of them there, shooting at us.'

Anderson hadn't noticed. He felt completely out of his
element. Minutes later he noticed another dent and scrape
on the top of the Humvee, right alongside the first one. He
hoped his buddy had silenced the gun that put it there.

At one stop on a wide street, when Anderson and the
men in his Humvee were positioned near a two -story
building, a Malaysian APC pulled up about twenty feet
behind them and its machine gunner opened fire. He was
shooting at the roof of the building alongside Anderson.
The rounds traced red lines through the darkness, so
Anderson could follow their trajectory, and they were all
bouncing off the building next to him. The wall was made
of irregular stone. Any one of those rounds could easily
come his way. There was nothing he could do but watch.
One of the rounds hit the building and then traced a wicked
arc across the street like a curveball.

Private Ed Kallman was somewhere else along the giant
convoy, driving again, equally amazed by the light show.
Kallman's left arm and shoulder were massively bruised
from the unexploded RPG that had hit the door of his
Humvee the previous afternoon and knocked him cold. He
felt fine, excited again, and reasonably safe in such a
massive force. There would be long periods of relative
quiet, then suddenly the night would explode with light and
noise. One or two shots from the dark houses or alleys on
both sides of the street would trigger a violent explosion of
return fire from the column. Up and down the line tracers
splashed out from the long line, literally thousands of

rounds in seconds, just hosing down whole blocks of
homes. His NODs framed the scene in a circle and offered
little depth perception. It also gave off heat just a half inch
from his face that after a while started to bother his eyes.
Then he would take a break and just look straight down or
off to the side. They eventually stopped and waited in the
same spot for several hours. Kallman was asked to pull his
Humvee back down the road, about a half block, which he
did, and no sooner had he moved than an RPG exploded on
what looked like the spot he had just left. He and others in
his vehicle laughed. An explosion on the wall above sent a
shower of debris down on them. No one was hurt. Kallman
moved the Humvee forward a few feet just to make sure it
wasn't stuck.

Through the remainder of the night he just listened to
the radio, trying to make sense out of the constant chatter,
trying to figure out what was going on.

Ahead of them in the long column. Sergeant Jeff
Struecker was shocked by all the shooting. He had heard a
sergeant major from the 10th Mountain Division telling his
men before they left, 'This is for real. You shoot at
anything,' and clearly these guys had taken him seriously.

Struecker had warned his own gunner to pick targets
carefully. 'When you shoot that fifty cal, that round goes on
forever,' the sergeant explained. It was clear the rest of the
convoy was not taking such precautions. They were
throwing lead all over that part of Mogadishu.

5

Earlier in the day, the American helicopters had
attacked the garage of Kassirn Sheik Mohamed, a tall,
beefy businessman with a round face, a swaggering walk,
and a troublemaker's smile. Kassim’s garage was bombed
because he had, being a wealthy man, a fairly large number
of armed men guarding it. At the height of the battle, any
large number of well-armed Somalis in the vicinity of the
fight was a target. The attack was not too misdirected.

Kassim was a well-to-do member of the Habr Gidr and a
supporter of Mohamed Farah Aidid.

When the bombing started, Kassim ran to a nearby
hospital, figuring it was a place the Americans would not
attack. He stayed there for two hours. When he returned to
his garage, much of it was a smoldering ruin. An explosion
had flipped a white UN Land Rover Kassim had purchased
about twelve feet into the air and deposited it upright atop a
stack of steel shipment boxes, as though someone had
parked it up there. Some of his most valuable earth-moving
equipment was destroyed. Dead was his friend and
accountant, forty-two -year-old Ahmad Sheik, and one of
his mechanics, thirty-two -year-old Ismael Ahmed.

It was late in the day, and the dead, according to Islamic
law, needed to be buried before sundown, so Kassim and
his men took the bodies to Trabuna Cemetery. On their
way there, a helicopter swooped down low over them and
fired rounds that hit all around the car but missed them.

The cemetery was crowded with wailing people. In the
darkness, as the guns of the fight still pounded in the
distance, every open space was crowded with people
digging graves. Kassim and his men drove to one of the
only quiet corners. They took shovels and the two bodies
from the back of their cars and began carrying them. Then
another American helicopter came down, frightening them,
so they dropped the bodies and shovels and ran. They hid
behind a wall until the helicopter was gone, and then went
back out and picked up the bodies, which were wrapped in
sheets, and continued carrying them. Another helicopter
zoomed in low over them. Again they dropped the bodies
and shovels and ran to the wall. This time they left the
bodies of Ahmad Sheik and Ismael Ahmed and drove
away, agreeing to come back later in the night to bury
them.

Four of Kassim’s men came back at about midnight.
The guns still pounded out in the city. They carried the
bodies up to a small rise and began digging. But another
American helicopter appeared, hovering low and shining a
floodlight down. Kassim’s men ran, leaving the bodies on

the ground.

They returned at three in the morning and were finally
able to bury Ahmad Sheik and Ismael Ahmed.

6

Half of the rescue convoy had steered south to Durant's
crash site, but had gotten stalled on the outskirts of the
ghetto-like village of rag and tin huts where Super Six Font-
had gone down. In darkness, the unmapped maze of
footpaths leading into the village looked potentially deadly
- it was like probing directly into the heart of the hornets'
nest. Sergeant John 'Mace' Macejunas, the fearless blond
Delta operator, on his third trip out into the city, slipped off
a Humvee and personally led a small force on foot, wearing
NODS and feeling his way into the village toward the
wrecked helicopter, where hours before Mace's buddies
Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon had made their last
stand.

Around the wreckage they found pools and trails of
blood, torn bits of clothing, and many spent bullet shells,
but no weapons and no sign of their buddies Shughart and
Gordon, nor of Durant and the three other crew members.
The soldiers searched the huts around the crash site,
demanding information about the downed Americans
through a translator, but no one offered any. Risking
drawing fire, they bellowed into the night the names of all
six of the missing men: 'Michael Durant!' 'Ray Frank!' 'Bill
Cleveland!' 'Tommie Field!' 'Randy Shughart!' 'Gary
Gordon!' There was only silence.

Macejunas then supervised the setting of thermite
grenades on the helicopter. They stayed until Super Six
Four was a ball of white flame, and then returned to the
convoy.

Meyerowich's northern half of the convoy had been
delayed by a big roadblock on Hawlwadig Road up near
the Olympic Hotel, which the Malaysian drivers refused to
roll through. In the past, such roadblocks had been heavily

mined.

Meyerowich pleaded with the liaison officer. 'Tell them
small arms fire is ineffective against them!' he said.

Once or twice he got out of his Humvee and walked up
to the lead APC and shouted, waving his arms, urging the
vehicle forward. But the Condor drivers refused to proceed.
So the convoy was stalled while soldiers climbed off the
vehicles and dismantled the roadblock by hand.

Meyerowich and the D-boys decided not to wait for the
roadblock situation to be sorted out. They ran up and down
the line of vehicles banging on the doors, shouting for all
the men to pile out of the vehicles. They knew they were
only blocks from the pinned-down force. 'Get out! Get out!
Get out! Americans, get out!'

One of those who emerged warily was Specialist Phil
Lepre. Earlier in the ride out, when the shooting got heavy
and rounds were pinging off the sides of the APC, Lepre
had removed a snapshot of his baby daughter he carried in
his helmet and kissed it goodbye. 'Babe,' he said, 'I hope
you have a wonderful life.’ He stepped out now into the
Mogadishu night, ran to a wall with two other soldiers, and
pointed his M-16 down an alley. When his eyes adjusted to
the darkness he saw a group of Somalis a few blocks down,
edging their way toward him.

'I've got Somali's coming down this way!' he said.

One of the D-boys told him to shoot, so Lepre fired
down toward the crowd. First he shot over their heads, but
when they didn't disperse he fired straight into them. He
saw several fall. The others dragged them off the alley.

Out in the intersection, soldiers were pulling apart the
barricade by hand under heavy fire. Lepre moved once or
twice up the road with the rest of the men. They were
spread out now on both sides of an alley a few blocks
ahead of the APCs. They would move, stop, and wait, then
move again, like parts of a human accordion slinking its
way east. At one of the places where they stopped they
began taking heavy fire from a nearby building. Men
moved to take better cover and find an improved vantage to
return fire.

’Hey, take my position,' he called back to twenty-three-
year-old rifleman Private James Martin.

Martin hustled up and crouched behind the wall. Lepre
had moved only two steps to his right when Martin was hit
in the head by a round that sent him sprawling backward.
Lepre saw a small hole in his forehead.

Lepre's voice joined others shouting, ’Medic! We need a
medic up here!'

A medic swooped over the downed man and began
loosening his clothes to help prevent shock. He worked on
Martin a few minutes, then turned to Lepre and the others
and said, 'He’s dead.'

The medic and another soldier tried to drag Martin's
body to cover but were scattered by more gunfire. One of
them ran back out and braved the gunfire, firing his
weapon with one hand and dragging Martin to cover with
the other. When he got close, others ran out to help, pulling
the body into the alley.

Lepre was behind cover just a few feet away, gazing at
Martin's body. He felt terrible. He had asked the private to
take his position, and then the man had been shot dead. All
the dragging had pulled Martin's pants down to his knees.
Few of the guys wore underwear in the tropical heat. Lepre
couldn't bear seeing Martin sprawled there like that, half
naked. So despite the gunfire, he stepped out into the alley
and tried to pull up the dead soldier's pants, to give the man
some dignity. Two bullets struck the pavement near where
he stooped, and Lepre scrambled reluctantly back to cover.

'Sorry, man,' he said.

7

The command bird continued to coax the force linkup at
the first crash site.

- They are leading the mounted troops by dismounted
troops. The dismounted troops and the mounted troops are
holding south of the Olympic Hotel...

Then, talking to the convoy, as they approached the left

turn:

- Thirty meters south of the friendlies. They are one
minor block to the north of you right now. If your lead APC
continues moving he can make the next left and go one
block, over.

Steele heard the vehicles making the turn. Out the door
his men saw the dim outline of soldiers. Steele and his men
called out, 'Ranger! Ranger!'

'Tenth Mountain Division,' came the response.

- Roger, we've got a linkup with the Kilo and Juliet
element, over.

Steele stuck his head out the door. This is Captain
Steele. I’m the Ringer commander.' 'Roger, sir, we're from
the 10th Mountain Division,' a soldier answered. 'Where's
your commander?' Steele asked.

8

It took hours to pry Elvis out of the wreck. It was ugly
work. The rescue column had brought along a quickie saw
to cut the chopper's metal frame away from his body, but
the cockpit was lined with a layer of Kevlar that just ate up
the saw blade. Next they tried to pull the Black Hawk
apart, attaching chains to the front and back ends of it. A
few of the Rangers, watching this from a distance, thought
the D-boys were using the vehicles to tear the pilot's body
out of the wreckage. Some turned away in disgust.

The dead were placed on top of the APCs, and the
wounded were loaded inside them. Goodale hobbled
painfully out to the one that had stopped before their
courtyard, and was helped through the doors. He rolled to
his side.

'We need you to sit,' he was told.

'Look, I got shot in the ass. It hurts to sit.'

'Then lean or something.'

At Miller's courtyard they carried Carlos Rodriguez out
first in his inflated rubber pants. Then they moved the other
wounded. Stebbins was feeling pretty good. Out the

window he could see 10th Mountain Division guys
lounging up and down the street, a lot of them. He
protested when they came back for him with a stretcher.

'I'm okay,' he told them. 'I can stand on one leg. Just
help me over to the vehicle. I’ve still got my weapon.'

He hopped on his good foot and was helped up into the
armored car.

Wilkinson climbed into the back of the same vehicle.
They all expected to be moving shortly, but instead they
sat. The closed steel container was like a sauna and it
reeked of sweat and urine and blood. What a nightmare this
mission had become. Every time they thought it was over,
that they'd made it, something worse happened. The injured
in the vehicles couldn't see what was going on outside, and
they didn't understand the delay. They'd all figured the
convoy would arrive and they'd scoot home. It was only a
five -minute drive to the airport. It was now after three
o’clock in the morning. The sun would be coming back up
soon. Bullets occasionally pinged off the walls. What
would happen if an RPG hit them?

There was a brief mutiny under way in Goodale's
Condor.

'Shouldn't we be moving?' Goodale asked.

'Yeah, I would think so,' said one of the other men
crammed in with him.

Goodale was closest to the front, so he leaned up to the
Malay driver.

'Hey, man, let's go,' he said.

'No. No,' the driver protested. 'We stay.'

'God damnit, we're not staying! Let's get the fuck out of
here!'

'No. No. We stay,'

'No, you don't understand this. We're getting shot at.
We're gonna get fucked up in this thing!'

The commanders were also growing impatient.

- Scotty [Miller], give me an update please, asked
Lieutenant Colonel Harrell.

Other than brief stops back at the base to refuel, Harrell
and air commander Tom Matthews were up over the city in

their C2 Black Hawk throughout the night.

Miller responded:

- Roger. They're trying to pull it apart. So far no luck.

- Roger. You've only got about an hour's worth of
darkness left.

There were more than three hundred Americans now in
and around these two blocks of Mogadishu, the vanguard
of a convoy that stretched a half mile back toward National
Street, which created a sense of security among the recently
arrived 10th Mountain troops that was not shared by the
Rangers or the D-boys who had been fighting all night. The
weary assault force watched with amazement as the regular
army guys leaned against walls and lit cigarettes and
chatted out on the same street where they had just
experienced blizzards of enemy fire. To Howe, the Delta
team leader who had been so disappointed by the Rangers,
these men seemed completely out of place. The wait for
them to extract Elvis's body was beginning to worry
everybody.

When an explosion rocked Stebbins's APC, men
shouted with anger inside. 'Get us the fuck out of here!' one
screamed. Rodriguez was moaning. Stebbins and Heard
were taking turns holding up the machine gunner's IV bag.
They were wedged into the small space like pieces of a
puzzle. Soon after the explosion the carrier's big metal door
swung open and a soldier from the 10th who had been hit
in the elbow was lifted in on a litter. He screamed with pain
as he hit the floor.

'I can't believe it!' he shouted.

The Malaysian driver kept turning back, trying to keep
things calm. 'Any minute now, hospital,' he would say.

After patching up the new arrival, Wilkinson sat back
against the inner wall and saw through a peephole that
darkness had begun to drain from the eastern sky. The
volume of fire was starting to pick up. There were more
pings off the side of the carrier.

The wounded who had been so eager to board the big
armored vehicles now prayed to get off. They felt like
targets in a turkey shoot. Goodale had only a small

peephole to see outside. It was so warm he began to feel
woozy. He removed his helmet and loosened his body
armor, but it didn't help much. They all sat in the small
dark space just staring silently at each other, waiting.

'You know what we should do,' suggested one of the
wounded D-boys. 'We should kind of crack one of these
doors a little bit so that when the RPG comes in here, we'll
all have someplace to explode out of.'

About an hour before sunrise, there was an update from
the C2 bird to the JOC:

- They are essentially pulling the aircraft instrument
panel apart around the body. Still do not have any idea
when they will be done.

- Okay, are they going to be able to get the body out of
there? Garrison demanded. I need an honest, no shit.for-
real assessment from the platoon leader or the senior man
present. Over.

Miller answered:

- Roger. Understand we are looking at twenty more
minutes before we can get the body out.

Garrison said:

- Roger. I know they are doing the best they can. We
will stay the course until they are finished. Over.

As the sky to the east brightened. Sergeant Yurek was
startled by the carnage back in the room where they had
spent the night. Sunlight illuminated the pools and smears
of blood everywhere. As he poked his head out the
courtyard door he could see Somali bodies scattered up and
down the road in the distance. One of the bodies, a young
Somali man, appeared to have been run over several times
by one of the vehicles being used to pull apart the
helicopter. Yurek was especially saddened to see, at a
corner of Marehan Road, the carcass of the donkey he had
watched miraculously crossing the street back and forth
through all the gunfire the day before. It was still hooked to
its cart.

Howe noticed among the bodies stacked on top of the
APCs the soles of two small assault boots. There was only
one guy in the unit with boots that small. It had to be Earl

Fillmore.

Everybody knew the respite here was about to end.
Daylight would bring Sammy back outdoors. Captain
Steele stood outside the courtyard door checking his watch
compulsively. He must have looked at it hundreds of times.
He couldn't believe they weren't moving yet. The horizon
was starting to get pink. Placing three hundred men at
jeopardy in order to retrieve the body of one man was a
noble gesture, but hardly a sensible one. Finally, at sunup,
the grim work was done.

- Adam Six Four [Garrison], this is Romeo Six Four
[Harrell]. They are starting to move at this time, over...
Placing the charges and getting ready to move.

Then came the next shock for the Rangers and D-boys
who had been fighting now for fourteen hours. There
wasn't enough room on the vehicles for them. After the
10th Mountain Division soldiers re -boarded, the anxious
Malaysian drivers just took off, leaving the rest of the force
behind. They were going to have to run right back out
through the same streets they'd fought through on their way
in.

It was 5.45 a.m., Monday, October 4. The sun was now
over the rooftops.

9

So they ran. The original idea was for them to run with
the vehicles in order to have some cover, but the Malay
drivers had sped out.

Still hauling the radio on his back, Steele ran alongside
Perino. Eight Rangers were strung out behind them. Behind
them were the rest of Delta Force, the CSAR team,
everybody. It happened so fast, men at the far end of the
line were surprised when they made the right turn at the top
of the hill to find that the others had moved out already.

Yurek ran with Jamie Smith's gear. Nobody had wanted
to touch it. It was like acknowledging he was gone. The
whole force ran the same route the main force had used

coming in, stopping at each intersection to spray covering
fire as they one by one sprinted across. As soon as they
began moving the shooting resumed, almost as bad as it
had been the afternoon before. The Rangers shot at every
window and door, and down every cross street. Steele felt
like his legs were lead weights and that he was moving at a
fraction of his normal speed, yet he was running as fast as
he could.

When they got up to their original blocking position
there was withering fire across the wide intersection before
the Olympic Hotel. Sergeant Randy Ramaglia saw the
rounds hitting the sides of the armored vehicles blocks
ahead. We're going to run through that? It was the same
shit as yesterday. He had made it up to the intersection
when he felt a sharp blow to his shoulder, like someone had
hit him with a sledgehammer. It didn't knock him down. He
just froze. It took a few seconds for him to regain his
senses. At first he thought something had fallen on him. He
looked up.

'Sergeant, you've been shot!' shouted Specialist Collett,
who had been running beside him.

Ramaglia turned to him. Collett's eyes were wide.

'I know it,' he said.

He took several deep bre aths and tried to move his arm.
He could move it. He felt no pain.

The round had hit Ramaglia's left back, taking out a
golf ball-sized scoop of it. The round had then skimmed off
his shoulder blade and nicked Collett's sleeve, tearing off
the American flag he had stitched there.

'Are you okay?' a Delta medic shouted at him from
across the street.

'Yeah,' said Ramaglia, and he started running again. He
was furious. The whole scene seemed surreal to him. He
couldn't believe some piss-ant fucking Sammy had shot
him. Sergeant Randal J. Ramaglia of the U.S. Army
Rangers. He was going to get out of that city alive or take
half of it with him. He shot at anyone or anything he saw.
He was running, bleeding, swearing, and shooting.
Windows, doorways, alleyways... especially people. They

were all going down. It was a free-for-all now. All
semblance of an ordered retreat was gone. Everybody was
just scrambling.

* * *

Sergeant Nelson, still stone deaf, ran alongside Private
Neathery, who had been shot in the right arm the afternoon
before. Nelson had his M-60 and carried Neathery's M-16
slung across his back. They ran as hard as they could and
Nelson shot at everything he saw. He had never felt so
frightened, not even at the height of things the previous
day. He and Neathery were toward the rear and were
terrified that in this wild footrace they would be left behind
or picked off. Neathery was having a hard time running,
which slowed them down. When they caught up to a group
providing covering fire at the wide intersection they were
supposed to stop and take their turn, cover for that group to
advance, but instead they just ran straight through.

Howe kicked in a door of a house on the street and the
team piled in to reload and catch their breath. Captain
Miller stepped in, breathing hard, and told them to keep
moving. Howe went around the room double -checking
everybody's status and ammo and then they pushed back
out to the street. He was shooting his CAR-15 and his
shotgun. Up ahead the APC gunners were shooting up
everything.

Private Floyd ran with his torn pants flapping, all but
naked from the waist down, feeling especially vulnerable
and ridiculous. Alongside him. Doc Strous disappeared
suddenly in a loud flash and explosion that knocked Floyd
down. When he regained his senses and looked over for
Strous, all he saw was a thinning ball of smoke. No Doc.

Sergeant Watson grabbed Floyd's shoulder. The
private's helmet was cockeyed and his eyes felt that way.

'Where the hell is Strous?'

'He blew up. Sergeant.'

'He blew up? What the hell do you mean he blew up?'

'He blew up.’

Floyd pointed to where the medic had been running.
Strous stepped from a tangle of weeds, brushing himself
off, his helmet askew. He looked down at Floyd and just
took off running. A round had hit a flashbang grenade on
Strous's vest and exploded, knocking him off his feet and
into the weeds. He was unhurt.

’Move out, Floyd,' Watson screamed.

They all kept running, running and shooting through the
brightening dawn, through the crackle of gunfire, the spray
of loose mortar off a wall where a round hit, the sudden
gust of hot wind from a blast that sometimes knocked them
down and sucked the air out of their lungs, the sound of the
helicopters rumbling overhead, and the crisp rasp of their
guns like the tearing of heavy cloth. They ran through the
oily smell of the city and of their own bodies, the taste of
dust in their dry mouths, with the crisp brown bloodstains
on their fatigues and the fresh memory of friends dead or
unspeakably mangled, with the whole nightmare now
grown unbearably long, with disbelief that the mighty and
terrible army of the United States of America had plunged
them into this mess and stranded them there and now left
them to run through the same deadly gauntlet to get out.
How could this happen?

Ramaglia ran on some desperate last reserve of
adrenaline. He ran and shot and swore until he began to
smell his own blood and feel dizzy. For the first time he
felt some stabs of pain. He kept running. As he approached
the intersection cf Hawlwadig Road and National Street,
about five blocks south of the Olympic Hotel, he saw a
tank and the line of APCs and Humvees and a mass of men
in desert battle dress. He ran until he collapsed, with joy.

10

At Mogadishu's Volunteer Hospital, surgeon Abdi
Mohamed Elmi was covered with blood and exhausted. His
wounded and dead countrymen had started coming early
the evening before. Just a trickle at first, despite the great

volume of shooting going on. Vehicles couldn't move on
the streets so the patients were carried in or rolled in on
handcarts. There were burning roadblocks throughout the
city and the American helicopters were buzzing low and
shooting and most people were afraid to venture out.

Before the fight began, the Volunteer Hospital was
virtually empty. It was located down near the Americans’
base by the airport. After the trouble had started with the
Americans most Somalis were afraid to come there. By the
end of this day, Monday, October 4, all five hundred beds
in the hospital would be full. One hundred more wounded
would be lined in the hallways. And Volunteer wasn't the
biggest hospital in the city. The numbers were even greater
at Digfer. Most of those with gut wounds would die. The
delay in getting them to the hospital - many more would
come today than came yesterday - allowed infections to set
in that could no longer be successfully treated with what
antibiotics the hospital could spare.

The three-bed operating theater at Volunteer had been
full and busy all through the night. Elmi was part of a team
of seven surgeons who worked straight through without a
break. He had assisted in eighteen major surgeries by
sunrise, and the hallways outside were rapidly filling with
more, dozens, hundreds more. It was a tidal wave of gore.

He finally walked out of the operating room at eight in
the morning, and sat down to rest. The hospital was filled
with the chilling screams and moans of broken people,
dismembered, bleeding, dying in horrible pain. Doctors and
nurses ran from bed to bed, trying to keep up. Elmi sat on a
bench smoking a cigarette quietly. A French woman who
saw him sitting down approached him angrily.

'Why don't you help these people?' she shouted at him.

'I can't,' he said.

She stormed away. He sat until his cigarette was
finished. Then he stood and went back to work. He would
not sleep for another twenty-four hours.

11

Abdi Karim Mohamud left his friend's house in the
morning after the Americans had gone. The day before he'd
been sent home early from his job at the U.S. embassy
compound and had run to witness the fighting around the
Bakara Market. It was so fierce he'd spent a long sleepless
night on the floor at his friend's house, listening to the
gunfire and watching the explosions light up the sky.

The shooting flared up again violently after sunrise as
the Rangers fought their way out. Then it stopped.

He ventured out an hour or so later. He saw a woman
dead in the middle of the street. She had been hit by bullets
from a helicopter. You could tell because the helicopter
guns tore people apart. Her stomach and insides were
spilled outside her body on the street. He saw three
children, tiny ones, stiff and gray with death. There was an
old man facedown in the street, his blood in a wide pool
dried around him, and beside him was his donkey, also
dead. Abdi counted the bullets in the old man. There were
three, two in the torso and one in the leg.

Bashir Haji Yusuf, the lawyer, heard the big fight
resume at dawn. He had managed to fall asleep for a few
hours and it awakened him. When that shooting stopped he
told his wife he was going to see. He took his camera with
him. He wanted to make a record of what had happened.

He saw dead donkeys on the road, and severe damage
to the buildings around the Olympic Hotel and further east.
There were bloodstains all over the buildings and streets, as
if some great thrashing beast had been through, but most of
the dead had been carried off. He snapped pictures as he
walked down one of the streets where the soldiers had run,
and he saw the husk of the first Black Hawk that had
crashed, still smoldering from the fire the Rangers had set
on it. As he walked he saw the charred remains of
Humvees, one that was still burning, and several Malaysian
APCs.

Then Bashir heard a great stir of excitement, people

chanting and cheering and shouting. He ran to see.

They had a dead American soldier draped over a
wheelbarrow. He was stripped to black undershorts and lay
draped backward with his hands dragging on the dirt. The
body was caked with dry blood and the man's face looked
peaceful, distant. There were bullet holes in his chest and
arm. Ropes were tied around his body, and it was half
wrapped in a sheet of corrugated tin. The crowd grew
larger as the wheelbarrow was pushed through the street.
People spat and poked and kicked at the body.

'Why did you come here?' screamed one woman.

Bashir followed, appalled. This is terrible. Islam called
for reverential treatment and immediate burial of the dead,
not this grotesque display. Bashir wanted to stop them, but
the crowd was wild. These were wild people, ghetto
people, and they were celebrating. To step forward and ask,
'What are you doing?' to try to shame them, as Bashir
wanted to do, would risk having them turn on him. He
snapped several pictures and followed the mob. So many
people had been killed and hurt the night before. The
streets filled with even angrier, more vicious people. A
festival of blood.

Hassan Adan Hassan was in a crowd that was dragging
another dead American. Hassan sometimes worked as a
translator for American and British journalists, and wanted
to be a journalist himself. He followed the crowd down to
the K-4 circle, where the numbers swelled to a sizable mob.
They were dragging the body on the street when an
outnumbered and outgunned squad of Saudi Arabian
soldiers drove up on vehicles. Even though they were with
the UN, the Saudis were not considered enemies of the
Somalis, and even on this day their vehicles were not
attacked. What the Saudis saw made them angry.

'What are you doing?' one of the soldiers asked.

'We have Animal Howe,' answered an armed young
Somali man, one of the ringleaders.

'This is an American soldier,' said another.

'If he is dead, why are you doing this? Aren't you a
human being?' the Saudi soldier asked the ringleader.

insulting him.

One of the Somalis pointed his gun at the Saudi soldier.
’We will kill you, too,' the gunman said.

People in the back of the crowd shouted at the Saudis,
’Leave it. Leave it alone! These people are angry. They
might kill you.'

'But why do you do this?' the Saudi persisted. 'You can
fight and they can fight, but this man is dead. Why do you
drag him?'

More guns were pointed at the Saudis. The disgusted
soldiers drove off.

Abdi Karim was with the crowd dragging the dead
American. He followed them until he grew afraid that an
American helicopter would come down and shoot at them
all. Then he drifted away from the mob and went home.
His parents were greatly relieved to see him alive.

12

The Malaysians led everyone to a soccer stadium at the
north end of the city, a Pakistani base of operations. The
scene there was surreal. The exhausted Rangers drove in
through the big gate out front, passed through the concrete
shadows under the stands, like going to a football or
baseball game at home, and then burst out blinking into a
wide sunlit arena, rows of benches reaching up all around
to the sky. In the lower stands lounged rows and rows of
10th Mountain Division soldiers, smoking, talking, eating,
laughing, while on the field doctors were tending the scores
of wounded.

Dr Marsh had flown to the stadium with two other docs
to supervise the emergency care. Unlike the first load of
casualties that had come in with the lost convoy, these had
mostly been patched up by medics in the field. Still, Dr
Bruce Adams found it a hellish scene. He was used to
treating one or maybe two injuries at a time. Here was a
soccer pitch covered with bleeding, broken bodies. The
wounded Super Six One crew chief Ray Dowdy walked up

to Adams and held up his hand, which was missing the top
digits of two fingers. The doctor just put his arm around
him and said, 'I'm sorry.'

For the Rangers, even the ride from the rendezvous
point on National Street to the stadium had been traumatic.
There was still a lot of shooting going on and barely
enough room on the Humvees to take all the men who had
run out, so guys were piled in two and three layers deep.
Private Jeff Young, who had badly twisted his ankle on the
run out, was picked up by one of the D-boys, who dropped
him into the backseat of a Humvee and then
unceremoniously sat on his lap. Private George Siegler had
hopefully sprinted up to the hatch of an APC just as a voice
yelled from inside, 'We can only take one more!'
Lieutenant Perino already had one leg in the hatch. Out of
the corner of his eye Perino saw the younger man's
desperation. He withdrew his leg from the hatch and said,
cloaking his kindness with officerly impatience, 'Come on.
Private, come on.’ It would have been easy for the
lieutenant to say he hadn't seen him. Siegler was so moved
by the gesture he decided then and there to re -enlist.

Nelson found himself in a Humvee that had four full
cans of 60 ammo, so he worked his pig the whole way out
of the city, shooting at anybody he saw. If they were on the
street and he saw them he shot at them. He was close to
coming out of this mess alive, and he was doing everything
he could to make sure he did.

On his way out, Dan Schilling, the air force combat
controller who had ridden out the bloody wandering of the
lost convoy and then come back out into the city with the
rescue convoy, saw an old Somali man with a white beard
walking up the road with a small boy in his arms. The boy
appeared to be about five years old and was bloody and
looked dead. The old man walked seemingly oblivious to
the firefight going on around him. He turned a corner north
and disappeared up the street.

For Steele, the worst moment in the whole fight had
come as they pulled away from National Street. The
captain was looking down the line of APCs, watching men

climb on board, and he saw Perino down at the end of the
line step back and let Siegler in the hatch and then, boom!
the vehicles took off. There were still guys back there,
Perino and others! He beat frantically on the shoulders of
the APC driver, screaming at him, Tve got guys still out
there!' but the Malay driver had a tanker helmet on and
acted like he didn't hear Steele and just kept on driving.
The captain got on the command net. Reception was so bad
inside the carrier that he could barely hear a response, but
he broadcast his alarm in disjointed phrases:

- We got left back on National... The Paki vehicles were
gonna follow us home, the foot soldier... But we loaded up
but we had probably fifteen or twenty still had to walk.
They took off and left us. We need to get somebody back
down there to pick them up.

- Roger. I understand, Harrell had answered. I thought
everybody was loaded. I got about three calls. They were
telling me they were loaded. Where are they on National?

- Romeo, this is Juliet. I'm sending this blind. I need
those soldiers picked up on National ASAP!

In fact, Perino and the others had been picked up, but
not without some trouble. The lieutenant and about six
other men. Rangers and some D-boys, were the last ones on
the street when what looked like the last of the vehicles
approached. The exhausted soldiers shouted and waved but
the Malaysian driver paid them no mind until one of the D-
boys stepped out and leveled a CAR-15 at him. He stopped.
They just piled in on top of the other men already jammed
inside.

Steele didn't find out until he got to the stadium. Some
of the Humvees had gone straight back to the hangar, so it
took a last stressful half hour to account for them. Finally
someone back at the JOC read him a list of all the Rangers
who had come back there. It was only then that the captain
took a long look around him and the magnitude of what
had happened began to register.

Lieutenant Colonel Matthews, who had been aloft in the
command bird with Harrell for the last fifteen hours exc ept
for short refueling breaks, stepped out of the bird and

stretched his legs. He'd become so used to the sound of the
rotors by now that he perceived the scene before him in
silence. The wounded were on litters filling half of the
field, tethered to IV bags, bandaged and bloody. Doctors
and nurses huddled over the worst of them, working
furiously. He saw Captain Steele sitting by himself on the
sandbags of a mortar pit with his head in his hands. Behind
Steele were rows of the dead, neatly arrayed in zippered
body bags. Out on the field, moving from wounded man to
wounded man, was a Pakistani soldier holding a tray with
glasses of fresh water. The man had a white towel draped
over his arm.

Those who were not wounded walked among the litters
on the soccer pitch with tears in their eyes or looking
drained and emotionless - thousand-mile stares.
Helicopters, Vietnam-era Hueys emblazoned with the Red
Cross, were coming and going, shuttling those who were
ready back to the hospital by the hangar. Private Ed
Kallman, who earlier had thrilled at the chance to be in
combat, now watched as a medic efficiently sorted the
litters as they came off vehicles like a foreman on a
warehouse loading dock - 'What have you got there? Okay.
Dead in that group there. Live in this group here.' Sergeant
Watson wandered slowly through the wounded, taking
account. Once the medics and doctors had cut off their
bloody, dirty clothes and exposed the wounds, the full
horror of it was much greater. There were guys with gaping
bruised holes in their bodies, limbs mangled, poor Carlos
Rodriguez with a bullet through his scrotum, Goodale and
Gould with their bare wounded asses up in the air, Stebbins
riddled with shrapnel, Lechner with his leg mashed,
Ramaglia, Phipps, Boom, Neathery... the list went on.

Specialist Anderson, despite his deep misgivings about
coming out with the main convoy, had come through it
unhurt. He was thrilled to find his skydiving buddy
Sergeant Keni Thomas still alive and unhurt, but other than
that he just felt emotionally spent. He recoiled at the
ugliness of the scene, the wounds, the bodies. When the
APC with Super Six One copilot Bull Briley's body on top

arrived, Anderson had to turn away. The body was
discolored. It looked yellow-orange, and through the deep
gash in his head he could see brain matter spilled down the
side of the carrier. When the medics came over looking for
help getting the body down, Anderson just ducked away.
He couldn't deal with it.

Goodale was laid out in the middle of the big stadium
with his pants cut off looking up at a clear blue sky. A
medic leaned over him dropping ash from his cigarette as
he tried to stick an IV needle in his arm. And even though
it was sunny and probably close to ninety degrees again,
Goodale's teeth chattered. He was chilled to the bone. One
of the doctors gave him some hot tea.

That's how Sergeant Cash found him. Cash had just
arrived on the tail end of the rescue convoy and was
wandering wild-eyed across the field looking for his
friends. At first sight he thought Goodale, who was pale
and shivering violently, was a goner.

'Are you all right?' Cash asked.

'I'll be all right. I'm just cold.'

Cash helped flag a nurse, who covered Goodale with a
blanket and tucked it in around him. Then they compared
notes. Goodale told Cash about Smith, and went down the
list of wounded. Cash told Goodale what he had seen back
at the hangar when the lost convoy came in. He told him
about Ruiz and Cavaco and Joyce and Kowalewski.

'Mac's hit,' said Cash, referring to Sergeant Jeff
McLaughlin. 'I don't know where Carlson is. I heard he's
dead.'

Rob Phipps fell out of the hatch of his APC when it
stopped in the stadium. After hours locked in that stinking
container with all the other wounded, there was a sudden
scramble for the fresh air as soon as the hatch was pushed
open. Phipps landed with a thud, but the fresh air was so
sweet he didn't mind the fall. He found he couldn't stand, so
a soldier he didn't know picked him up and carried him to
the doctors. Phipps had been fixed with an IV in his arm
when one of the guys from his unit walked up and told him
about Cavaco and Alphabet.

Floyd climbed up over the railing and mounted the
benches to a group of 10th Mountain Division guys and
bummed a cigarette. On his way down. Sergeant Watson
waved him over to join the rest of his squad who were still
standing. Watson somberly went down the list of those
killed. Floyd was especially shocked to hear about Pilla.
Smith and Pilla were his best friends in the world.

Stebbins sucked in large lungfuls of fresh air when the
hatch of his APC finally swung open. He helped get some
of the others off and then a litter was lifted on for him. He
was dragging himself toward it when a 10th Mountain
sergeant shouted, ’Don't make him crawl, boys,' and
suddenly hands came in from all sides and Stebbins was
lifted gently.

He was set down among a group of his buddies, naked
from the waist down. Sergeant Aaron Weaver brought him
a hot cup of coffee.

’Bless you, my son,’ said Stebbins. ’Got any cigarettes?’

Weaver had none. Stebbins asked everyone who walked
past, without luck. He finally grabbed one soldier from the
10th by the arm and pleaded, ’Listen, man, you got to find
me a fucking cigarette.’ One of the Malaysian drivers, a guy
everybody in the APC (including Stebbins) had been
screaming at an hour earlier, walked up and handed him a
cigarette. The driver bent down to light it and then handed
him the rest of the pack. When Stebbins tried to hand it
back, the Malaysian took it and stuffed it in Stebbins’s shirt
pocket.

Watson approached.

’Stebby, I hear you did your job. Good work,’ he said,
then he reached down and took a two -inch flap of cloth
from Stebbins’s shredded trousers and tried to place it over
his genitals. They both laughed.

Dale Sizemore couldn’t wait to find the guys on his
chalk. He desperately wanted them to know that he hadn't
sat out the fight back at the hangar, but had fought in after
them, twice. It was important that they know he had come
after them.

The first person he found was Sergeant Chuck Elliot.

When they saw each other they both cried, happy to be
alive, to see each other again. Then Sizemore started telling
Elliot about the dead and wounded Rangers who had been
on the lost convoy. They wept and talked and watched the
dead being loaded on helicopters.

There's Smitty,' said Elliot.

'What?'

'That's Smith.'

Sizemore saw two feet hanging out from under a sheet.
One was booted, the other bare. Elliot told him how he and
Perino and the medic had taken turns for hours putting their
fingers up inside Smith's pelvic wound trying to pinch off
the femoral artery. They had cut off the one pants leg and
boot, that's how he knew it was Smith. He choked up and
cried.

Then Sizemore found Goodale, with his butt in the air.

'I got shot in the ass,' Goodale announced.

'Serves you right, Goodale, you shouldn't have been
running away,' Sizemore told him.

Steele was shocked when he learned that more of his
men were dead. The sergeant who told him didn't have an
accurate count yet, but he thought it might be three or four
Rangers. Four? Up until he reached the stadium. Smith
was the only one Steele had known about for sure. He
strode off to be by himself. He grabbed a bottle of water
and just sat drinking it, alone with his thoughts. He felt this
overwhelming sadness, but dared not break down in front
of his men. There was no one else of his rank around him,
no one he could confide in. Some of his men were in tears;
others were chattering away like they couldn't talk fast
enough to get all their stories out. The captain felt odd,
hyper-alert. It was the first time in almost a full day when
he felt he could let down for a minute, just relax. Every
sight and sound of the busy scene before him registered
fully, as though his senses had been finely tuned for so long
that he couldn't pull back. He found himself a place to sit at
the edge of a mortar pit and laid his rifle across his lap and
just breathed deeply and swished the cool water in his
mouth and tried to review all that had happened. Had he

made the right decisions? Had he done everything he
could?

Sergeant Atwater, the captain's radio operator, wanted
to go over and say something to him, comfort him
somehow. But he felt it wouldn't have been appropriate.

One by one the wounded were loaded on helicopters
and flown either to the army hospital at the U.S. embassy
or back to the hangar.

The chopper ride back was calming for Sizemore, the
sensations so reminiscent of all those days in Mog before
this fight, the profile flights, the heady first six missions
where everything had gone so well. Feeling the wind
through the open doors and looking out over the now-
familiar squalor below, the ocean stretching off to the east,
things felt normal again. It was a reminder of how they had
been just a day before, full of fun and so spoiling for a
fight. That was just twenty-four hours ago. Nothing would
be like that for them again. There was no chatter now in the
Black Hawk on the way back to the base. The men all rode
silently.

Nelson looked out over the deep blue waters at a U.S.
Navy ship in the distance. It was like he was seeing things
through someone else's eyes. Colors seemed brighter to
him, smells more vivid. He felt the experience had changed
him in some fundamental way. He wondered if other guys
were feeling this, but it was so strange, he didn’t know how
to explain it or how to ask them.

As his chopper lifted off, Steele watched the tight
network of streets that had closed in on them the previous
afternoon open up once again to a broader panorama, and
he was struck by how small the space was they had fought
over, and it reminded him just how remote and small a
place Mogadishu was in the larger world.

As Sergeant Ramaglia was loaded on a bird, a medic
leaned over him and said, 'Man, I feel sorry for you all.'

'You should feel sorry for them,' the sergeant said, '
'cause we whipped ass.'

13

After depositing their dead and wounded, the D-boys
quickly boarded helicopters and were flown back to the
hangar. Sergeant Howe and his men went solemnly back to
work, readying themselves to go right back out. They had
trained to function without sleep for days at a time, so they
were in a familiar place, one they called the 'drone zone,' a
point at which the body transcends minor aches and pains
and grows impervious to hot and cold. In the drone zone
they motored on with a heightened level of perception,
non-reflective, as if on autopilot. Howe didn't like the
feeling, but he was used to it. Some of the Rangers and
even some of his friends in he unit were acting like they
had been beaten, which pissed off the big sergeant. He
knew he and his men had inflicted a lot more damage than
they'd absorbed. They had been put in a terrible spot and
had not only survived, they'd mauled the enemy. He didn't
know the estimated body counts, but whatever the numbers
he knew they'd just fought one of the most one-sided
battles in American history.

He pulled off his sweat-soaked Kevlar and gear and
spread it all out on his bunk. He re -stuffed all of the
pouches and pockets with ammo. Then he methodically
stripped down each of his weapons, cleaned and re-
lubricated each, concluding each procedure with a function
check. When he had everything ready and packed again he
stood over it with a strong sense of satisfaction. His kit, and
the precise way that he'd packed it, had served him well,
and he wanted to remember exactly how everything was,
for the next time. The only thing he would have done
differently is take along those NODs. He stuffed them in
his backpack. He would never again go on a mission
without them, night or day.

Howe was surprised to still be alive. The thought of
heading straight back out into the fight scared him, but the
fear was nothing next to the loyalty he felt to the men
stranded in the city. Some of their own were still out there -

Gary Gordon, Randy Shughart, Michael Durant, and the
crew of Super Six Four. Alive or dead, they were coming
home. This fight wasn't over until every one of them was
back. Fuck it, let's go out there and kill some folks. That
was how he set his mind.

And if they were going back out, there was going to be
hell to pay.

14

Sizemore didn't find out that his buddy Lorenzo Ruiz
was dead until after he got back to the hangar.

'You heard about Ruiz, right?' asked Specialist Kevin
Snodgrass.

Sizemore knew right away what had happened and he
couldn't stop crying. When they had flown Ruiz out earlier
in the afternoon for the hospital in Germany he was still
alive. Not long after he left, word came back that he had
died. Ruiz had tried to hand Sizemore the packet of letters
for his parents and loved ones before the mission and
Sizemore had refused it. Now Ruiz was dead. Sizemore
couldn't believe it was Ruiz and not him who had been
killed. Ruiz had a wife and a baby. Why would Ruiz be
taken and not him? It seemed deeply unfair to Sizemore.
Sergeant Watson sat with him for hours, consoling him,
talking things through with him. But what could you say?

Sergeant Cash had seen Ruiz not long before he had
been flown out.

'You're going to be fine,' he told him.

'No. No I'm not,' Ruiz said. He had barely enough
strength to form the words. 'I know it's over for me. Don’t
worry about me.’

Captain Steele got the accurate casualty list when he
returned to the hangar. First Sergeant Glenn Harris was
waiting for him at the door. He saluted.

'Rangers lead the way, sir.'

'All the way,' Steele said, returning the salute.

'Sir, here's what it looks like,' Harris said, handing over

a green sheet of paper.

Steele was aghast. One list of names ran the entire
length of the page. There weren't just four men killed. On
this list the death toll was thirteen. Six others were missing
from the second crash site and presumed dead. Of the three
critically injured men already flown out to a hospital in
Germany - Griz Martin, Lorenzo Ruiz, and Adalberto
Rodriguez - Ruiz had already been reported dead. Seventy-
three men had been injured. Among the dead, six were
Steele's men -Smith, Cavaco, Pilla, Joyce, Kowalewski,
and Ruiz. Thirty of the injured were Rangers. Harris had
started a second column at the top that ran almost to the
bottom of the page. One third of Steele's company had
either been killed or injured.

'Where are they?' Steele asked.

'Most are at the hospital, sir.'

Steele stripped off his gear and walked across to the
field hospital. The captain put a gre at store on maintaining
at least a facade of emotional resilience, but the scene in
the hospital undid him. It was a mess. Guys were lying
everywhere, on cots, on the floor. Some were still
bandaged in the haphazard wraps given them during the
fight. He choked out a few words of encouragement to
each, fighting back the well of grief in his craw. The last
soldier he saw was Phipps, the youngest of the Rangers on
the CSAR bird. Phipps looked to Steele like he'd been
beaten with a baseball bat. His face was swollen twice
normal size and was black and blue. His back and leg were
heavily bandaged and there were stains from his oozing
wounds. Steele laid his hand on him.

'Phipps?'

The soldier stirred. When he opened his eyes there was
red where the whites normally were.

'You're gonna be okay,' Steele said.

Phipps reached up and grabbed hold of the captain's
arm.

'Sir, I'll be okay in a couple of days. Don't go back out
without me.’

Steele nodded and fled the room.

Private David Floyd was struck by how empty the
hangar looked. He dragged himself back to his cot and
stripped off his gear. But instead of feeling relieved, he felt
this great weight and soreness descend. Around him, guys
were talking and talking and talking. It was like they were
trying to work the whole thing out. They accounted for all
of their number. For every one of the killed or scores of
injured there was a story to be told about how and when
and where and why. Sometimes the stories differed. One
thought Joyce was still alive for a time in the back of the
truck while another insisted he was killed almost instantly.
Somebody thought it was Diemer who had pulled Joyce
from the line of fire, but another was sure it was Telscher.
Stebbins had gone down four times. No, somebody argued,
it was only three. They told of the long futile struggle to
keep Jamie Smith alive. They wept openly.

Nelson, one of the last to return to the hangar, found
Sergeant Eversmann in tears.

'What's wrong?' Nelson asked. Then, knowing his
friend Casey Joyce had been on Eversmann's chalk, he
asked, 'Where's Joyce?'

Eversmann looked at him with surprise, and then got
too choked up to speak. Nelson ran into the hangar and
sought out Lieutenant Perino, who gave him the bad news.
He also told him Pilla, his partner n the hangar skits, was
dead. Nelson broke down.

Joyce's death particularly grieved him. He owed the
man an apology. Fed up with the order to stand guard duty
in full battle dress a few days earlier. Nelson had told the
men on his team it was okay to ignore it. He told them to
wear their body armor and helmet over shorts and T-shirts.
If it caused trouble, he said, he'd take the heat. He hadn't
really thought that through, however, because when the
trouble came it landed not on him but on Joyce, who was
nominally his superior. Joyce had been sternly upbraided
for not being able to control his men.

Nelson had pulled guard duty early Sunday morning,
between three and seven, and Joyce had roused himself to
come out to talk. They had been together ever since basic

training, and they had a special, almost family connection.
They had actually met each other years before joining the
army. It was just a wild coincidence. Nelson's stepbrother
had roomed with Joyce's older brother in an apartment in
Atlanta, and they had met each other there once or twice as
kids. Nelson admired Joyce. He had never seen the man say
or do anything unseemly. Just about everybody had tied
one on at a local bar or secretly smoked dope or bad-
mouthed somebody or tried to get away with something
against the rules. Not Casey Joyce. As far as Nelson was
concerned, Joyce was the most thoroughly decent guy he'd
ever met, genuine to the core. Joyce had gotten his sergeant
stripes first, but they both knew Nelson would be getting
his soon. It was awkward for Joyce to be Nelson's superior.
They were friends. They had made plans with Pilla and a
few of the other guys to drive out to Austin and stay with
Joyce's sister for a few days when they got back.

Nelson felt bad about getting his friend in trouble. Just
over twenty-four hours ago they had sat together behind a
machine gun surrounded by sandbags under a nearly full
moon. The guard post was up on a Conex that had been
stacked on another to create a nice high vantage point. It
was quiet. The low roof-lines of Mogadishu spread before
them rolling uphill to the north. In the distance they could
hear the steady banging of small generators that kept, here
and there, a light-bulb or two burning. Otherwise the city
was draped in pale blue moonlight.

'Look, I'm as tired of this chain -of-command shit as you
are,' Joyce had told Nelson. 'Just do me a favor. Whatever
happens, don't do anything that gets First Sergeant Harris
and Staff Sergeant Eversmann on my back. Let's do what
we need to do so we can get out of here. Don't let this come
between you and me.'

Joyce hadn't bitched at him, which he had every right to
do and which most guys would have. He was making a
plea, man to man, friend to friend. The right thing for
Nelson to do was to apologize, and the words were right
there on the tip of his tongue, but Nelson didn't say them.
He was still angry about the rule, which he thought was

pointless and stupid, and he wouldn't swallow his pride.
Not even for his friend. The apology had still been there on
the tip of his tongue the previous afternoon when he'd
helped Joyce pull on his gear. Joyce was squad leader and
had to be the first one out to the helicopter, so Nelson
always helped him. He'd been close to saying the apology,
but instead just watched his friend walk off. Now he would
never have the chance.

Nelson was asked to inventory his friend's gear. He
found Joyce's Kevlar vest, the one he had helped him ut on
the day before. It had a hole in the upper back right at the
center. He rooted through the vest pockets - a lot of guys
stuffed pictures, love letters, and things in the pockets. In
the front of Joyce's vest he found the bullet. It must have
passed right through his friend's body and been caught up
in the Kevlar in front. He put it in a tin can. In Pilla's
belongings he found a bag of the little explosives his friend
used to insert in people's cigarettes.

Sergeant Watson walked over to the morgue to see
Smith one last time. He unzipped the body bag and gazed
at his friend's pinched, pale lifeless face. Then he leaned
over and kissed his forehead.

15

America awakened Monday morning (it was already
late afternoon in Mogadishu) to news reports of an ugly
fight in Somalia, a place most people had to consult an
atlas to find. It wasn't the biggest news. Russian president
Boris Yeltsin was fending off a coup d'etat. Washington
was preoccupied with developments in Moscow.

Sandwiched in between the dramatic reports from
Russia, however, came increasingly distressing news from
Somalia. At least five soldiers had been killed and 'several'
wounded, the early reports said. Even those numbers
indicated the worst single day in Mogadishu since the
United States had committed troops ten months before.
Then, later in the day, came the grotesque images of dead

American soldiers being dragged through the city's dusty
streets by angry crowds.

President Clinton was in a hotel room in San Francisco
when he saw the pictures. He had been informed earlier in
the day that there had been a successful raid in Mogadishu,
but that the Rangers had gotten in a scrape. The TV images
horrified and angered him, according to an account in
Elizabeth Drew's book On the Edge.

'How could this happen?' he demanded.

The trickle of news was a peculiarly modem form of
torture at the homes of the men serving in Somalia.
Stephanie Shughart, the wife of Delta Sergeant Randy
Shughart, had gotten a phone call at ten o'clock Sunday
night. She was home alone. She and Randy had no
children. One of the other Fort Bragg wives left her with a
chillingly imprecise bit of bad news.

'One of the guys has been killed,' she said.

One of the guys.

Stephanie had talked on the phone with Randy on
Friday night. As usual, he'd said nothing about what was
going on, just that it was hot, he was getting enough to eat,
and he was getting a great tan. He told her he loved her. He
was such a gentle man. It had always seemed so
incongruous to her how he made a living. He didn't say
anything about his work when they first met. Some of
Stephanie's better-connected friends had whispered to her
that Randy was 'an operator.' She'd figured he worked on
the phones.

One of the guys.

In a bedroom in Tennessee, just across the state line
from the Night Stalkers' base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,
Becky Yacone sat with Willi Frank. Both their husbands,
Jim Yacone and Ray Frank, were Black Hawk pilots, and
they knew two helicopters had gone down over Mogadishu.
Willi had been awakened at six a.m. by a chaplain and
commander from the base. She knew right away why the
men were at her door. She'd been through exactly the same
thing three years before, when Ray's chopper had crashed
on the training mission. She'd met Ray on her birthday

twenty-two years earlier, when she was managing a bar in
Newport News. Her employees had surprised her with a
cake, and everybody ate it except Ray. When she'd asked
him why, he'd told her, like it was something everybody in
the world with any sense would know, 'You don't eat cake
when you're drinking beer.' They'd gotten married in Las
Vegas that same year.

'Ray is missing in action,' the men said.

'How long will it be before we know?' she asked.

They were startled by the question.

'Last time it only took two hours,' Willi explained.

This time it would take longer. Her support unit showed
up, wives of two other men in the unit, and then Becky
came over. Becky was a Black Hawk pilot herself. She'd
met her husband when they were classmates at West Point.
She had no news about Jim yet. They all agreed that if
anybody could get out of a mess like this alive, downed in
the streets of a hostile African city, it was their husbands.

Then the pictures came on the TV. The first of them
came on just after noon. They were images of dead
Americans. The pictures were distant and shot from such
odd angles it was impossible to tell who the dead men
were.

'That one has dirty fingernails,' said one of the women.
'He must be a crew chief.’

There was some discussion about that. The bodies were
in the dirt.

'They're all dirty,' said another woman.

Nobody at Willi's thought to tape the show and rerun it.
Maybe it was too ghoulish. Besides, they didn't need to
tape it. CNN kept showing the same pictures every half
hour. At these short intervals conversation would cease and
the women would all crowd anxiously around the screen.

That's Ray,' said Willi. Something about the way the
body was lying, the turn of the shoulders and arms...

'No, he's too small,' said Becky. They knew Randy
Shughart and Gary Gordon were missing, and they were
both much shorter than Ray.

'No,' said Willi. 'I just know that's Ray.'

She said she was, but she wasn't sure. She had a bad
feeling, but she wasn't giving up hope.

At the hangar in Mogadishu, the men watched like
everybody else the images of their dead comrades being
put on display by the jeering Somali crowds. The men who
filled the TV room at the hangar saw it replayed again and
again. No one said a word. Some of the men turned and left
the room. Captains Jim Yacone and Scott Miller sat
together before the screen trying to figure out if the body
they were looking at was Randy Shughart's or Ray Frank's.
Both men had the same build and gray hair. Ray's had
turned gray almost overnight. He had contracted a rare
disorder in his early thirties and had become allergic to the
pigment of his own hair. It had all fallen out and grown
back snowy white. Ray also had scars on his torso from the
extensive surgery he'd undergone after the Black Hawk
crash in training. The D-boys were convinced the body was
Randy's. It was galling to watch the Skinnies strutting
around the bodies, poking at them with rifles, dragging
them. What kind of animals... ?

The pilots wanted to get up over those crowds and mow
them down, just mow them all down. Fuck the whole lot of
them. Then land and recover the bodies. These were
American soldiers. Their brothers.

Garrison and Montgomery said no. There were big
crowds around those bodies. It would be a massacre.

Mace, Sergeant Macejunas, went back out into the city.
The blond operator had gone out into the fight three times
the day and night before. Leading the force on foot to
Durant's crash site when the vehicles could go no further
was enough to make his courage legendary. Now he was
going out alone, dressed as a civilian, a journalist. The D-
boys had arranged with one of the sympathetic local NGOs
for help finding the six men still missing from the second
crash site, Durant, Frank, Field, Cleveland, Shughart, and
Gordon. Mace was going along.

To a man, the task force dreaded the prospect of going
back into the city, but they were prepared to do it, with as
much weaponry, armor, and ammo as they could carry.

Here was Mace heading back out without any of that. He
was going to find his brothers, alive or dead. The Rangers
who saw him were in awe of the man's courage and cool.

16

Mike Durant's captors asked if he would make a
videotape.

'No,' said Durant.

He was surprised they'd asked. If they wanted to make a
video, they were going to anyway. But, since they'd
asked...

Durant had been trained how to handle himself in
captivity. How to avoid being helpful without being
confrontational. The pilot knew if he got out of this alive,
his actions would be scrutinized. It was safer not to be in
that position, speaking to the world from captivity.

They showed up with a camera crew that night anyway.
It had been more than twenty-four hours since he crashed
and was carried off in an angry swarm of Somalis. He was
hungry, thirsty, and still terrified. He had a compound
fracture of his right leg, a crushed vertebra, and bullet and
shrapnel wounds in his shoulder and thigh. His face was
bloody and swollen from where he had been clubbed in the
face with the butt of a rifle. His dark hair, caked with sweat
and dirt and blood, stuck straight up on end like some
cartoon depiction of fright.

There were about ten young men in the crew. They set
up lights. Only one of the crew spoke to him, a young man
with good English. Durant knew the key to getting through
something like this was to offer as little pertinent
information as possible, to be cagey, not confrontational.
There was a code of conduct spelling out what he could say
and what he couldn't say, and Durant was determined to
abide by it. His interrogators were not skillful. Men had
been questioning him on and off all day, trying to get him
to tell them more about who he was and what his unit was
trying to do in Somalia. When the camera was turned on.

the interviewer began pressing him on the same points. The
Somalis considered all the Americans with the task force to
be Rangers.

'No, I'm not a Ranger,' Durant told him. He explained
he was a pilot.

'You kill people innocent,' the interviewer insisted.

'Innocent people being killed is not good,' Durant said.

That was the best they got out of him. Those were the
words people all over the world would be seeing on their
TV the next day. Somalia had been a back-burner news
item in the weeks before this battle. None of the major
American newspapers or networks even had a
correspondent in Mogadishu. Now this east African coastal
city was front and center. The coup d'etat fizzled in
Moscow and the images of the Somali crowds humiliating
American bodies had drawn the attention of the world, and
the outrage of America. Durant's swollen, bloody face, with
that wild, frightened look in his eye, lifted off the
videotape, would soon be in newspapers and on the covers
of newsmagazines worldwide. It was an image of
American helplessness. More than one American asked the
same question President Clinton had asked, How could this
have happened? Didn't we go to Somalia to feed starving
people?

Willi Frank got down on her hands and knees and
peered closely at the TV. She was trying to see around the
corners of the screen. She was sure, if they had Durant,
they must have other members of the crew. They probably
had Ray, too. He was probably sitting right next to Mike,
just off the frame!

Durant felt okay about the interview. After the camera
crew left, a doctor came. He was kind, and he spoke
English well. He told Durant he had been trained at the
University of Southern California. He apologized for the
limited supplies he had with him, just some aspirin, some
antiseptic solution, and some gauze. He used forceps and
gauze and the solution to gently probe Durant's leg wound,
where the broken femur poked through the skin, and he
cleaned off the end of the bone and the tissue around it.

It was sharply painful, but the pilot was grateful. He
knew enough about wounds to know that a femur infection
was relatively common and deadly, even with simple
fractures. His was compound, and he had been lying on a
dirty floor all night and day. Durant asked about his crew
and the D-boys, but the doctor said he knew nothing.

When the doctor left, the pilot was moved from the
room where he had awakened that morning to the sounds of
birds and children. He was pushed to the floor in the back
of a car, and a blanket was placed over him. It was terribly
painful. Then two men got in the car and sat on him. His
leg was moving all over the place. It had swelled badly,
and the slightest move was torture.

They brought him to a little apartment and left him in
the care of a gangly, nearsighted man he would come to
know well over the next ten days. It was Abdullahi Hassan,
a man they called 'Firimbi,' the propaganda minister for
clan leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

The pilot didn't know it, but the warlord had paid his
ransom. Now, to get Durant back, America would have to
negotiate with Aidid.

17

Garrison and the task force were willing, but
Washington had lost its stomach for the fight.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Robert Oakley
had been attending a party at the Syrian embassy in
Washington on Tuesday, October 5, when he got a phone
call from the White House. It was Anthony Lake, national
security adviser to President Clinton.

'I need to talk to you first thing in the morning,' Lake
said.

'Why, Tony?' Oakley said. Tve been home for six
months.'

Oakley, a gaunt, plain-spoken intellectual with a
distinguished career in diplomacy, had been President
George Bush's top civilian in Mogadishu during the

humanitarian mission that had begun the previous
December. With the famine over and a new administration
in Washington, Oakley had departed the city in March
1993, at about the same time his old friend Admiral
Jonathan Howe had taken over the top UN job in Somalia.

Since his return, Oakley had watched with dismay the
course of events in Somalia. He had frequent conversations
with former colleagues in the State Department, but despite
his long experience there, no top officials in the
administration had consulted with him. He wasn't offended,
but he was concerned about prospects for the government-
building process he'd help set in motion. He'd watched with
growing concern as events and UN resolutions pushed
Aidid out of the peace process, and felt the idea of tracking
the clan leader down like an outlaw was bound to fail. But
no one had asked his opinion.

'Can you come to breakfast tomorrow at seven-thirty?'
Lake asked.

Now they were in trouble. The day after the October 3
battle, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Secretary of
State Warren Christopher had been grilled by angry
members of Congress. How had this happened? Why were
American soldiers dying in far-off Somalia when the
humanitarian mission there had supposedly ended months
before? As many as five hundred Somalis had been killed
and over a thousand injured. Durant was still a captive. The
public was outraged, and Congress was demanding
withdrawal.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democratic chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, called for an immediate end 'to
these cops-and-robbers operations.'

'Clinton's got to bring them home,' said Senator John
McCain, a Republican member of the Armed Services
Committee and former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There were perceived intelligence failures up and down
the line. In Mogadishu, the escalating violence between the
Habr Gidr and UN forces had been perceived as individual
incidents, not the probing actions of a determined enemy
force. In Washington, officials at the Pentagon, White

House, and Congress were stunned by the size, scope, and
ferocity of Aidid's counterattack on October 3. In
retrospect, Aspin's inaction on General Montgomery's
September request for tanks and Bradley armored vehicles
seemed indicative of an administration that had fallen
asleep on its watch - something Republican legislators
could use to batter the Clinton administration.

The battle was also a blow to an administration already
unpopular with the military establishment. It made Clinton
look disinterested in the welfare of America's soldiers. The
president had been getting briefed on Task Force Ranger's
missions in advance. This one had been mounted so
quickly he had not been informed. Clinton complained
bitterly to Lake. He felt he had been blind-sided, and he
was angry. He wanted answers to a broad range of
questions from policy issues to military tactics.

At the breakfast table in the East Wing on Wednesday
were Lake and his deputy, Samuel R. Berger, and U.S.
Ambassador to the UN Madeleine K. Albright. They talked
about what had happened informally, and then walked
Oakley into the Oval Office, where they joined the
president, the vice president, Christopher, Aspin, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several other
advisers.

The meeting lasted six hours. The thrust of the
discussion was: What do we do now? Staying in
Mogadishu to pursue Aidid was out of the question, even
though Admiral Howe and General Garrison were eager to
do so. They believed Aidid had been struck a mortal blow
and that it wouldn't take much more to finish the job. If the
reports from local spies were correct, some of Aidid's
strongest clan allies had fled the city fearing the inevitable
American counterattack. The clan's arsenals of RPGs were
severely depleted. Others were sending peace feelers,
offering to dump Aidid to ward off more bloodshed. But it
was clear listening to the discussion that morning in the
White House that America had no intention of initiating
any further military action in Somalia.

America was pulling out. The meeting ended with a

decision to reinforce Task Force Ranger, make a show of
military resolve, but call off any further efforts to
apprehend Aidid or his top aides. After enough tanks, men,
planes, and ships poured into Mogadishu to level the city,
the forces were to simply stay put for a while. Renewed
efforts would be made to negotiate a stable Somali
government that would include Aidid, but the United States
would make a dignified withdrawal, by March 1994. The
Somali warlord didn't know it yet, but his clan had scored a
major victory. Without U.S. muscle, there was no way the
UN could impose a government on Somalia without
Aidid's cooperation.

Oakley was dispatched to Mogadishu to deliver this
message and to try to secure the release of Durant.

There would be no negotiating with Aidid over Durant.
Oakley was instructed to deliver a stern message: The
president of the United States wanted the pilot released.

Now.

18

Firimbi was a big man for a Somali, tall with long arms
and big hands. He had a potbelly, and squinted through
thick, cloudy black-framed glasses. He was extremely
proud of his position in the SNA. Once Aidid had
purchased Durant back from the bandits who had
kidnapped him, Firimbi was told, 'Anything bad that
happens to the pilot will also happen to you.'

When Durant arrived that night, Firimbi found him
angry, frightened, and in pain. He met the pilot's sullen
demeanor with his own earnest hostility. America had just
caused a bloodbath in Firimbi's clan, and he held men like
this pilot accountable. It was hard not to be angry.

Durant had no idea where he'd been taken. In the drive
through the city he had been under a blanket in the
backseat. They might have been taking him out to kill him.
The men who brought him carried him up steps and along a
walkway and set him down in a room.

Firimbi greeted him, but the pilot at first didn't answer.
Durant could speak a little Spanish, and Firimbi, like most
educated Somalis, could speak Italian. The languages were
similar enough for them to communicate somewhat. After
they had been alone together for a time they spoke enough
to establish this basis for limited conversation. Durant
complained about his wounds. Despite the efforts of the
doctor who visited him at the other place, they had become
swollen, tender, and infected. Firimbi sullenly helped wash
him again and re -bandaged them. He passed word along
that Durant needed a doctor.

That night, Monday, October 4, Durant and Firimbi
heard American helicopters flying overhead, broadcasting
haunting calls:

’Mike Durant, we will not leave you.'

'Mike Durant, we are with you always.'

'Do not think we have left you, Mike.’

'What are they saying?' Firimbi asked.

Durant told him that his friends were worried about
him, and would be looking for him.

'And we treat you so nicely,' said his captor. 'It is a
Somali tradition never to hurt a prisoner.'

Durant smiled at him through his battered, swollen face.

19

For Jim Smith, the father of Corporal Jamie Smith, the
nightmare had begun during a Monday afternoon meeting
in the conference room of the bank where he worked in
Long Valley, New Jersey. The meeting was interrupted
when his boss's wife opened the door and stepped in.

She said she was sorry to interrupt, then turned to
Smith.

'I just got a call from Carol,' she said. 'Call home.’

Obviously, Smith's wife, Carol, had felt this was urgent.
They'd been ignoring the office phones during the meeting,
so Carol had called the boss's home number, looking for a
way to track him down.

Smith called his wife from an adjoining office.

'What's the matter?' he asked.

He will always remember her next words.

There are two officers here. Jamie has been killed. You
have to come home.’

When he opened the door at home, Carol said, 'Maybe
they're wrong, Jim. Maybe Jamie is just missing.'

But Smith knew. He had been a Ranger captain in
Vietnam, and lost a leg in combat. He knew that in a tight
unit like the Rangers, death notification wouldn't go out
unless they had the body.

'No,' he told his wife quietly, trying to make the words
sink in. 'If they say he's dead, they know.'

Camera crews began to arrive within hours. When
everyone in his immediate family had been given the news,
Smith walked out to the front yard to answer questions.

He was repulsed by the attitude of the reporters and the
kinds of questions they asked. How did he feel? How did
they think he felt? He told them he was proud of his son
and deeply saddened. Did he think his son had been
properly trained and led? Yes, his son was superbly trained
and led. Whom did he blame? What was he supposed to
say: The U.S. Army? Somalia? Himself, for encouraging
his son's interest in the Rangers? God?

Smith told them that he didn't know enough about what
had happened yet to blame anybody, that his son was a
soldier, and that he died serving his country.

A Mailgram arrived two days later with a stark message
signed by a colonel he didn't know. It resonated powerfully
with Smith, even though he knew its contents before
reading the words. It joined him in a sad ritual as old as war
itself, with every person who had ever lost someone
beloved in battle:

'THIS CONFIRMS PERSONAL NOTIFICATION
MADE TO YOU BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE
SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, THAT YOUR SON, SPC
JAMES E. SMITH, DIED AT MOGADISHU, SOMALIA,
ON OCTOBER 3, 1993. ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY
HAVE SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO YOUR

CASUALTY ASSISTANCE OFFICER. PLEASE
ACCEPT MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY IN YOUR
BEREAVEMENT.’

20

Stephanie Shughart got word about her husband,
Randy, that same Monday morning. She had been up all
night after getting the word that 'one of the guys' had been
killed. Anticipating further news, she had called her boss to
say she wouldn't be in for work - a family emergency. The
families at Bragg braced themselves. At least one family
was going to take a hit.

Stephanie's boss knew that Randy was in the army, and
he sometimes did dangerous work. She also knew how
uncharacteristic it was for Stephanie to stay home from
work. She drove straight over to the Shugharts' house.

The two women drank coffee and watched CNN.
Stephanie was in a perfect agony of suspense as the first
TV reports aired about what had happened in Mogadishu.
She and her boss were talking when two silhouettes
appeared outside the door.

Stephanie opened it to two men from her husband's
unit. One was a close friend. This is it. He's dead.

'Randy is missing in action,' he said.

So it was better news than she expected. Stephanie was
determined not to despair. Randy would be okay. He was
the most competent man alive. Her mental image of
Somalia was of a jungle. She pictured her husband in some
clearing, signaling for a chopper. When her friend told her
that Randy had gone in with Gary Gordon, she felt even
better. They're hiding somewhere. If anybody could come
through it alive, it was those two.

News came rapid-fire over the next few days, all of it
bad. Families learned of the deaths of Earl Fillmore and
Griz Martin. Then there were the horrible images of a dead
soldier being dragged through the streets. Then word came
that Gary's body had been recovered. Stephanie despaired.

When proof came that Durant was alive and being held
captive, her hopes soared. Surely they had Randy, too.
They just weren't showing him on camera. She prayed and
prayed. First she prayed for Randy to be alive, but as the
days went by and her hopes dimmed, she began to pray that
he not be someplace suffering, and that if he were dead,
that he died quickly. Over the next week she went to
several funerals. She sat and grieved with the other wives.
Eventually all the missing men except Shughart had been
accounted for. All were dead, their bodies horribly
mutilated.

Stephanie asked her father to stay with her. Her friends
took turns keeping her company. This went on for days. It
was hell.

When she saw a car pull into her driveway with several
officers and a priest inside, she knew.

'They're here. Dad,' she said.

'The Somalis have returned a body, and it's been
identified as Randy,' one of officers said.

'Are you sure?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'We're sure.'

She was discouraged from viewing Randy's body -and,
being a nurse, Stephanie could imagine why better than
most. She sent a friend to Dover, Delaware, where the body
had been flown. When he came back, she asked, 'Could
you tell it was him?'

He shook his head sadly. He hadn't been able to tell.

21

DeAnna Joyce had been feeling lucky. On Friday night,
two nights back, they'd held a lottery over at the
lieutenant's house on post at Fort Benning to see when the
wives would get to talk to their husbands. They hadn't seen
the men for months, ever since they'd left to train at Fort
Bliss earlier that summer. Eighteen of the women would
get to take phone calls Saturday night, eighteen more
Sunday night, and two on Monday. DeAnna had gotten

stuck with one of the Mondays, but as she was leaving
another of the wives had wanted to switch, so she'd gotten
to speak to Casey Saturday night. Then all the calls for
Sunday and Monday were canceled.

There had always been that good fortune in Casey's
smile. She'd met him at a mall in Texas. DeAnna was
working as a saleswoman for a clothing store chain. The
Limited, and this guy she knew stopped in to ask her a
question about a girl. He’d introduced her to Casey. They
must have said all of two words to each other.

'Hey.'

'Howyadoin'?'

Like that. Only, she learned later, on his way out of the
store Casey had informed his friend, 'I’m going to marry
that girl.'

They started dating, and then Casey transferred from
the University of Texas to North Texas University in order
to attend the same school as DeAnna. He was studying
journalism. But he didn't like going to class and wasn't
doing that well and told her one day in 1990 that he was
going to leave school and join the army. Or, he asked her.
She'd said, 'Do what you want.' So he'd gone through basic,
then airborne school, where he'd gotten this horrible fist-
sized tattoo on the back of his right shoulder. It was
supposed to be a Rottweiler, but it looked more like a
wildcat. It sported an airborne unit maroon beret. Then he
decided to push on through the Ranger Indoctrination
Program.

Casey's father, a retired lieutenant colonel, had never
won a Ranger tab, so it was something Casey was bound
and determined to do. It wasn't easy. He and his buddy
Dom Pilla had both just about decided to quit - Casey
called and asked DeAnna if she'd think less of him, and
she'd said no - but then Casey and Dom had talked each
other into staying. They'd both made it. He returned home a
Ranger, making plans to get the maroon beret on his tattoo
re -colored with the black beret of the Rangers. They were
married on May 25, 1991.

DeAnna started crying when she got on the phone with

him Saturday night, and couldn't stop. It upset Casey, too.
They both just sobbed back and forth how much they loved
each other. She was desperate for him to come home.

All the wives were invited over to the lieutenant's house
that Sunday, where they learned that the comp any had been
involved in a firefight. All of them, even the cooks. All the
women were panicky, but DeAnna was feeling lucky. The
more experienced wives explained that for guys who got
injured, there would be a phone call. For those who were
dead, there would be a knock at the door. DeAnna lay
awake that night thinking about that.

There was a knock on the door at 6:30 A.M. DeAnna
threw on her robe, and ran down to the door. He's dead.
Casey is dead. She opened the door, but instead of finding
soldiers there were two neighbor children.

'Our mother's father died last night and we have to
leave, and we wanted to know if you'd take care of our
dog.'

As DeAnna dressed to go next door, she kicked herself
for having even had such a morbid, terrible thought about
Casey. How could you even think that? She was next door,
getting instructions for minding the dog and consoling her
friend, whose father had died in another state, when one of
the other neighbors present mentioned that she'd heard
eleven Rangers had been killed in Somalia.

When DeAnna got home there was a message on the
machine from Larry Joyce, Casey's dad, asking her to call.
Larry knew DeAnna would get word first if anything had
happened, and he'd phoned her when he'd seen the TV
report. She called him.

'President Clinton has already been on TV expressing
condolences to the families,' her father-in-law said. The
president had used the expression 'unfortunate losses,' and
voiced continued, determined support for the mission.

DeAnna said she'd heard nothing. They agreed that this
was probably good news. She was about to make another
call when there was a new knock on the door.

She started down the stairs again, figuring it was the
next-door kids with more dog instructions, only this time it

was three men in uniform.

'Are you Dina?' one asked.

'No, I'm not,' she said, and shut the door.

The men pushed the door open gently.

'Are you Mrs Joyce?'

Sometime in the first week of shock and grief, DeAnna
received Casey's affects. With them was a letter he had
been writing her just before leaving on the fatal mission.
DeAnna knew that the experience in Somalia had shaken
Casey, and that in the months he was away he had brooded
over minor problems in their relationship.

'I miss you so much,' the letter said, speaking now from
beyond the grave. Tve said it probably a thousand times,
but I want things to be different, and I know they will be. I
love you so much! I can't say it stronger. I want you to love
me with all your heart. I think you already do, but just in
case I want to prove to you that I'm worth it. I’m not going
to come home and be a total nerd slush, if you know what I
mean, but I’m going to be myself. I'm going to make you
into the most important person in my life. I’m not going to
lose sight of this ever again. I want you to know that I want
to grow old with you. I want you to realize this because I
can't do it all by myself. I know most of the problems are
me and I want to change. I want to go to church. I want us
to be happy. Anyways, I can't say it enough, but I want to
start doing things about it. I can't do anything until I get
home... By the time you get this letter I might be on my
way home, or real close to it.'

22

Durant's fear of being executed or tortured eased after
several days in captivity. After being at the center of that
enraged mob on the day he crashed, he mostly feared being
discovered by the Somali public. It was a fear shared by
Firimbi.

The propaganda minister had grown fond of him. It was
something Durant worked at, part of his survival training.

He made an effort to be polite. He learned the Somali
words for 'please,' pit les an, and 'thank you,' ma hat san-e.
The two men were together day and night for a week. They
shared what appeared to be a small apartment. There was a
small balcony out the front door, which reminded Durant of
an American motel.

The woman who owned the house where Durant was
staying insisted on fixing the pilot a special meal, as is the
custom for guests in Somalia. She slaughtered a goat and
made a meal of goat meat and pasta. The meal was
delicious, and huge. Durant thought the chunk of meat and
bone in his bowl could feed five people. But the next day
both the pilot and his captor had diarrhea. Firimbi helped
keep the bedridden pilot clean, which was uncomfortable
and embarrassing for both men.

Firimbi kept trying to cheer up the pilot.

'What do you want?' he kept asking.

'I want a plane ticket to the United States.'

'Do you want a radio?'

'Sure,' Durant said, and he was given a small black
plastic radio with a volume so low he had to hold it up to
his ear. That radio became his lifeline. He could hear the
BBC World Service, and reports about his captivity. It was
wonderful to hear those English voices coming from his
own world.

In subsequent days, they laughed and teased each other
about the flatulence that followed the worst of the ailment.
The mood of his captivity lightened. Durant's leg had been
splinted, but was still swollen and painful. Day and night
he lay on the small bed. Sometimes it would be silent for
hours. Sometimes he and Firimbi would talk. Their pidgin
'Italish' got better.

Durant asked Firimbi how many wives he had.

'Four wives.'

'How many children?'

Firimbi lied.

'Twenty-seven,' he said.

'How do you provide for so many?' the pilot asked.

'I’m a businessman,' Firimbi said. 'I used to have a flour

and pasta factory,' which was true. He also had grown sons
who had left Somalia and sent money he said. (Firimbi
actually had nine children.)

Durant told him he had a wife and a son.

Firimbi tried to explain t> the pilot why Somalis were
so angry at him and the other Rangers. He talked about the
Abdi House attack, how the helicopters had killed scores of
his friends and clansmen. Firimbi complained about all the
innocent people the Americans had killed, women and
children. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, he said.
He explained that Aidid was an important and brilliant
leader in his country, not someone the UN or the
Americans could just label an outlaw and carry off. Not
without a fight anyway. Firimbi considered Durant a
prisoner of war. He believed that by treating the pilot
humanely, he would improve the image of Somalis in
America upon his release. Durant humored his jailer,
asking him questions, indulging his whims. For instance,
Firimbi loved his khat. One day he handed cash to a guard
and sent him to purchase more. When the man returned he
began dividing the plant into three equal portions, one for
himself, Firimbi, and another guard.

’No,' Firimbi said. 'Four.'

The guard looked at him quizzically. Hrimbi gestured
toward Durant. Durant quickly figured out what his jailer
was up to. He nodded at the guard, indicating a cut for
himself.

When the guard left, Firimbi scooped up the two piles
for himself, winking at Durant and flashing an enormous
grin.

Firimbi identified so strongly with the pilot that when
Durant refused food, he refused food. When Durant
couldn't sleep because of his pain, Firimbi couldn't sleep,
either. He made Durant promise that when he was released
he would tell how well treated he had been. Durant
promised he would tell the truth.

After five miserable days in captivity, Durant got
visitors. Suddenly the room was cleaned and the bed-sheets
were changed. Firimbi helped the pilot wash, redressed his

wounds, gave him a clean shirt, and wrapped his mid-
section and legs in a ma-awis, the loose skirt worn by
Somali men. Perfume was sprayed around the room.

Durant thought he was about to be released. Instead,
Firimbi ushered in a visitor. She was Suzanne Hofstadter, a
Norwegian who worked for the International Red Cross.
Durant took her hand and held on tight. All she had been
allowed to bring along were forms with which he could
write a letter. In the letter Durant described his injuries and
noted that he had received some medical treatment. He told
his family he was doing okay, and asked them to pray for
him and the others. He still didn’t know the fate of his crew
or D-boys Shughart and Gordon.

He wrote that he was craving a pizza. Then he asked
Firimbi if he could write another letter to his buddies at the
hangar, and his jailer said yes. He wrote that he was doing
okay, and told them not to touch the bottle of Jack Daniels
in his rucksack. Durant didn't have much time to think. He
was trying to convey in a light-hearted way that he was
okay, to lessen their worry for him. At the bottom of this
note he wrote, 'NSDQ.'

Later, Red Cross officials, concerned about violating
their strict neutrality by passing along what might be a
coded message, scratched out the initials.

After Hofstadter left, two reporters were ushered in:
Briton Mark Huband of the Guardian and Stephen Smith
from the French newspaper Liberation. Huband found the
pilot lying flat on his back, bare-chested, obviously injured
and in pain. Durant was still choked up from the session
with Hofstadter. He had held her hand until the last
moment, unwilling to see her leave.

Huband and Smith had brought a recorder. They told
him he didn't have to say anything. The reporters pitied
Durant, and tried to reassure him. Huband said he’d done a
lot of reporting in Somalia, and had developed a sense for
when things were bad and when they weren't. He said his
sense was that these people meant Durant no harm.

Durant weighed talking to them and decided it was
better to communicate with the outside world than not. He

agreed to discuss only the things that had happened to him
since the crash. So with the tape recorder rolling, he briefly
described the crash and his capture. Then Huband asked
why the battle had happened, and why so many people had
died. Durant said something he would later regret:

Too many innocent people are getting killed. People
are angry because they see civilians getting killed. I don't
think anyone who doesn't live here can understand what is
going wrong here. Americans mean well. We did try to
help. Things have gone wrong.'

It was that 'things have gone wrong' line that haunted
him after the reporters left. Who was he to pronounce a
verdict on the American mission? He should have just said,
'I'm a soldier and I do what I’m told.'

He grew depressed. He really did believe things had
gone wrong, but he felt he had stepped over a line by
saying it.

Durant stayed down until the next day when he heard
his wife Lome's voice on the BBC. She had made a
statement to the press. He listened intently to her voice. At
the end of her statement, Lorrie said four words that
brought tears to his eyes. What she said were the four
words whose initials the pilot had penned at the bottom of
his note - still visible despite the Red Cross scratches. It
was the motto of his unit, the 160th Special Operations
Aviation Regiment.

Lorrie said, 'Like you always say, Mike, Night Stalkers
Don 't Quit. '

His message of defiance had gotten through.

23

In the week following the battle, the men of Task Force
Ranger worked through a broad range of emotions as they
girded themselves for another fight. They were furious at
the Somalis and filled with grief for their dead comrades.
They felt disgust for the press that kept showing the
horrible images of the dead soldiers being humiliated in the

city, less than a mile or two from where they sat. They
watched with frustration as a fresh Delta squadron and
Ranger company arrived, and grudgingly accepted a
backseat, although every man was prepared and expected
to be sent back out into the city. They observed the
swagger and casual boasting of the new arrivals with the
weary eyes of experience. They all knew that if intel
located Durant, they'd be going in with more force than
Mogadishu had yet seen. The idea of making this fight was
both terrifying and grimly necessary. It was a prospect they
both dreaded and welcomed. It was odd that the two
emotions could stand side by side. So the men who'd come
through the battle unhurt worked to get their weapons,
vehicles, minds, and hearts ready.

Then, two days after the fight, a Somali mortar round
fell just outside the hangar and killed Sergeant Matt
Rierson, leader of the Delta team that had first stormed the
target house and taken the Somali targets captive, and
whose resolve and experience had helped shore up the lost
convoy during the worst of the fight. It seemed bitterly
unfair to have come through the storm unhurt only to be
felled while standing outside the hangar in idle
conversation two days later. Severely injured with Rierson
was Dr Rob Marsh, the Delta surgeon. Alert though in
great pain and bleeding profusely. Marsh helped direct the
medics who gave him emergency care.

Rangers struggled to accept their profound losses.
There was no doubt that they had more than held their own
in the battle. What other ninety-nine men would have
survived a long afternoon and night besieged by the well-
armed angry citizenry of a city of more than a million?
Still, each death mocked their former cockiness and
appetite for battle. A whole generation of American
soldiers had served careers without experiencing a horror
of an all-out firefight. Now another had. There was a
recognition in the faces of the survivors, a hard-won
wisdom.

Sergeant Eversmann mentally replayed his every move
during the battle, as he would still be doing years later.

from the moment he accidentally tore the headphones out
of the hovering Black Hawk to finding Private Blackburn
broken and unconscious on the street, to watching his men
get hit, one after the other, to that long and bloody ride on
the lost convoy. Why had he kept them out on the street
when the fire grew so bad? Shouldn't he have directed them
to break down a door and move indoors? How did they get
so lost on the ride back? He’d lost Casey Joyce on that ride.
There was nothing he could have done about that. Word
was that doctors might be able to save Scotty Galentine's
thumb. They had sewed Galentine’s hand with the thumb
into his stomach, hoping to foster regeneration of the blood
vessels they'd need to reconnect it. And word was that
Blackburn was going to make it, too. He was conscious
again, although he had no memory of his fall or anything
else that happened on the street. He would recover, but
never be the same guy his buddies remembered before the
fall. The rest of the injuries were minor. But Eversmann
had only about six of his guys left.

From Chalk One, the one led in by Captain Steele and
Lieutenant Perino, they'd lost Jamie Smith, whose
agonizing death at the first crash site would continue to
haunt Perino and Sergeant Schmid, the Delta medic who'd
tom open Smith's wound trying to save him.

Smith's death would become the most controversial of
the battle, since his was the one life that might have been
saved if the force around Wolcott's crash site had been
rescued sooner. Carlos Rodriguez, the Ranger shot in the
crotch at crash site one, was going to recover as well. Dale
Sizemore had fended off the doctors who still wanted him
sent home because of his elbow. He paced the hangar
hoping for another chance to avenge his friends. Steve
Anderson wrestled with feelings of guilt. So many others
had died or been hurt. Why had he escaped injury? He
wasn't sure what made him angrier, the reluctance he'd felt
about joining the fight or the politicians in Washington
who'd gotten so many of his friends killed and hurt chasing
a stupid warlord in Mogadishu. He would grow angrier and
angrier brooding over it, and as time went by he was filled

with distrust for the system he had enlisted to defend. Mike
Goodale, his wounded thigh and rear end bandaged and
healing, would be back home in Illinois with his girlfriend
Kira before the week was out. Goodale asked Kira to marry
him the first time he talked to her on the phone from
Germany. He'd seen how short life could be and was
determined not to put an important thing off ever again.
Lieutenant Lechner faced a long recovery, as doctors at
Walter Reed Army Hospital painstakingly stimulated bone
growth to heal the hole an AK-47 round had driven through
his shin. Undergoing virtually the same procedure in the
bed next to his was Sergeant John Burns, whose lower leg
had been shattered by a bullet on the lost convoy. Stebbins
was home with his wife within the week. The garrulous
company clerk would receive a Silver Star for his part in
the fight, and was on his way to becoming a legend in the
company, an example of how even those in the unit's least
glamorous jobs were Rangers, too.

The ground convoy had been decimated. Only about
half of the fifty-two men who had ridden out on October 3
were still at the hangar. Their vehicles were wrecked.
Nearly all of the convoy's leaders had been injured and had
been flown home, including Lieutenant Colonel Danny
McKnight. Clay Othic and his buddy Eric Spalding were
back home from Germany before the week was out. On the
long transport flight home, his right arm still bandaged and
disabled, Othic had scribbled a final entry in his Mogadishu
diary with his unsteady left hand: 'Sometimes you get the
bear; sometimes the bear gets you.' Within days, he and
Spalding, their wounds bandaged and healing, made the
drive home to Missouri they'd promised themselves to
catch the end of deer-hunting season. Cruising the
interstate in Spalding's pickup they listened to occasional
radio reports about the unfinished business in Mogadishu, a
million miles away.

Worst hit was the Delta squadron, which had lost the
devout Dan Busch, little Earl Fillmore, Randy Shughart,
Gary Gordon, Griz, and then Rierson. Brad Hallings, the
Delta sniper whose leg was sheared off inside Super Six

Eight , would learn to get around so well on an artificial
limb that he was able to rejoin the unit. Paul Leonard, who
had the calf of his left leg blown away manning a Mark- 19
on the lost convoy, would end up doing a long recuperation
and rehab at Walter Reed with Burns, Lechner, Galentine,
and some of the other more seriously injured guys.
President Clinton visited them there one day about two
weeks after the battle. He came without fanfare, and
seemed shocked and uncharacteristically speechless when
confronted with the flesh-and-blood consequences of the
fight. The men had been given curt instructions to keep
their opinions of Clinton, if negative, to themselves.
Galentine posed for a snapshot with the president, a T-shirt
pulled over the hand sewed to his abdomen. In the snapshot
both men looked equally startled to be in each other's
company.

The war wasn't over yet in Mogadishu, however. The
soldiers who had come through the fight unscathed
expected things to get worse before they got better. They
did what they could to salute their fallen brothers and move
on. In the days following the battle the Night Stalkers
erected a makeshift memorial before the JOC in memory of
the men they'd lost. General Garrison assembled all of the
men for a memorial service, and captured their feelings of
sadness, fear, and resolve with the famous martial speech
from Shakespeare's Henry V:

Whoever does not have the stomach for this fight, let
him depart. Give him money to speed his departure since
we wish not to die in that man's company. Whoever lives
past today and comes home safely will rouse himself every
year on this day, show his neighbor his scars, and tell
embellished stories of all their great feats of battle. These
stories he will teach his son and from this day until the end
of the world we shall be remembered. We few, we happy
few, we band of brothers; for whoever has shed his blood
with me shall be my brother. And those men afraid to go
will think themselves lesser men as they hear of how we
fought and died together.

24

Willi Frank got the word about her husband exactly a
week after he was reported missing. It had been a terrible
week. Those who hadn't gotten final word on the fate of
their men had continued to scrutinize the news photos and
videotapes of the dead.

One of the most widely circulated shots of a body being
dragged through the streets, the one with the left leg bent
up awkwardly, was Tommie Field. The other of the
dragged bodies, the one most often seen on TV, was Randy
Shughart. The still photo of a body draped backward over a
handcart was Bill Cleveland. There was no official
confirmation from the army, but the families knew.

Willi was attending the funeral service for Cliff Wolcott
when she heard beepers go off in several places around the
church. Two of the beepers that sounded were held by
members of her support unit.

They took her aside after the service. Willi thought they
were escorting her to spend a few minutes with Chris
Wolcott. Instead, they told her Ray's body had been
identified.

'How do you know it was Ray?' she asked them. 'Was
his hair gray?'

The hair was gone on the body, they said, but they
described his remains. The body had been clothed, they
told her. She asked them to describe the pants, the
underpants. Ray had left on such short notice that Willi
hadn't had time to dry out his military skivvies. Instead
she'd packed his civilian underwear. When they told her
what kind of shorts he was wearing, she knew.

25

In his second week of captivity, Durant was moved
again, this time to what appeared to be a private residence
with a perimeter fence. He was given a box of gifts from
the Red Cross. One of the items in the box was a pocket

Bible.

Keeping track of time was one of the skills Durant had
been taught in survival training. Prisoners of war in
Vietnam had found that having some sense of time elapsed
and ordering the events of each day, no matter how
mundane, helped to keep them sane. Keeping a record was
an act of faith. It implied you would eventually be released
and have a story to tell.

He was not an especially religious man, but Durant
found his own use for the Bible. He began reconstructing
the events of his captivity in the margins of it, using code
words, beginning with his crash. He wrote:

'Bump,' recalling the sensation of being hit by the RPG.

'Spin.'

'Horizon,' for the blurring of earth and sky as the
chopper spun down.

And so forth. He pressed on, eventually reconstructing
the entire term of his captivity almost hour by hour. The
margins of the Bible were beginning to fill with his
jottings.

Firimbi watched the pilot studying and making notes in
his Bible and assumed Durant was a very religious man.

'If you convert to Islam, you will be freed,' the captor
said.

'You pray to your God, and I'll pray to mine, and maybe
we'll both be released,' Durant joked.

On the radio they played selections of music that
Durant liked.

During one of his nights in captivity, Durant had a
dream. He dreamed he was one of the Rangers, and that he
was supposed to get on a chopper with Chalk Four. Instead
he stumbled blindly, asking, 'Where's Chalk Four? Where's
Chalk Four?' He didn't recognize the faces of the people he
was questioning. Suddenly, everyone else in the dream was
gone. Overhead a chopper rose into the sky and flew off,
leaving him alone on the ground.

26

When Robert Oakley arrived in Mogadishu on October
8, Aidid was still in hiding. It took several days to arrange,
but he eventually met with the warlord's clan. He told the
Habr Gidr leaders that the U.S. military operation against
Aidid was over and that Task Force Ranger's original
mission had ended. The Somalis were skeptical.

'You'll see for yourself over time that it's true,' Oakley
said. Then he told them that President Clinton wanted
Durant released immediately, without conditions. The
Somalis were incredulous. The Rangers had rounded up
sixty or seventy men from their leadership. The top men,
including the two most important men taken on October 3,
Omar Salad and Mohamed Hassan Awale, were being held
in a makeshift prison camp on an island off the coast of
Kismayo. Any release of Durant would at least involve a
trade. That was the Somali way.

'I'll do my best to see that these people are released, but
I can't promise anything,' Oakley said, pointing out that the
Somalis were, technically, in the custody of the UN. 'I'll
talk to the president about it, but only after you've released
Durant.'

Then the former ambassador delivered a chilling
message. He was careful to say, 'This is not a threat,' but
the meaning was plain.

'I have no plan for this, and I'll do everything I can to
prevent it, but what will happen if a few weeks go by and
Mr Durant is not released? Not only will you lose any
credit you may get now, but we will decide that we have to
rescue him. I guarantee you we are not going to pay or
trade for him in any way, shape, or form... So what we'll
decide is we have to rescue him, and whether we have the
right place or the wrong place, there's going to be a fight
with your people. The minute the guns start again, all
restraint on the U.S. side goes. Just look at the stuff coming
in here now. An aircraft carrier, tanks, gunships... the
works. Once the fighting starts, all this pent-up anger is

going to be released. This whole part of the city will be
destroyed, men, women, children, camels, cats, dogs, goats,
donkeys, everything... That would really be tragic for all of
us, but that's what will happen.’

The Somalis delivered this message to Aidid in hiding,
and the warlord saw the wisdom of Oakley's advice. He
offered to hand the pilot over immediately.

Mindful of not upstaging his old friend Admiral Howe,
Oakley asked them to delay for a few hours to give him
time to leave the country. He asked them to turn Durant
over to Howe, and he flew back to Washington.

27

Firimbi told Durant he was going to be released the
next day. The propaganda minister was very happy to
deliver this news, but also very nervous. He was happy for
his friend and for himself. He joked that both of them were
going to be released. Firimbi would be free to go back to
his normal life. He thought releasing Durant without any
conditions was a stunning demonstration of Aidid and Habr
Gidr munificence. He got choked up just talking about it.
This gesture, he said, would undo at a stroke the awful
images of the mob mutilating dead American soldiers, a
scene that embarrassed Firimbi and other educated men of
his clan. He repeatedly urged Durant to reassure him that
he would tell the world how well he had been treated in
captivity.

The decision was such a good one, Firimbi grew afraid
something would spoil it. What if an angry faction of
Somalis got wind of the deal and came looking for Durant
to kill him? What if the Americans were setting them up?
The Americans could send someone to kill Durant, and the
world would believe Aidid and the Habr Gidr had done it.
Firimbi requested more protection, and the clan ringed the
residence where Durant was held with armed men.

That morning, Firimbi helped Durant wash. This time,
instead of being thrown in the back of a car and sat on, men

arrived with a litter to carry him out gently and placed him
in the back of a flatbed truck. Durant knew this was it. He
would be nervous until he was back in American hands, but
Firimbi was so happy and excited he knew that it was true.

They drove him to a walled compound and waited.
When Red Cross officials arrived, an army doctor came in
with the team and examined him. He wanted to give the
pilot a shot for the pain, but Firimbi said no. He was afraid
the doctor would poison Durant.

The pilot was handed over without ceremony. Red
Cross officials gave him a letter from Lorrie and from his
parents that they had been unable to deliver. The doctor
who examined him emerged from the compound to tell
reporters that the pilot had a broken leg, a blattered
cheekbone, a fractured back, and relatively minor bullet
wounds to his leg and shoulder, but had been treated well
by his captors.

'The leg was in a splint, but it hasn't been set and is
quite painful,' the doctor said.

Then he was carried out by Red Cross officials. Durant
clutched the letter and tears rolled from his eyes as he was
carried past reporters and driven back to the airport Ranger
base where he had taken off eleven days earlier.

Every American who survived the Battle of Mogadishu
would be home within the month. Most would stay bitter
about the decision to call off their mission. If it had been
important enough to get eighteen men killed, and seventy-
three injured, not to mention all the Somalis dead or hurt,
how could it just be called off the day after the fight?
Within weeks of Durant's release, American Marines (at
Oakley's direction) would escort Aidid to renewed peace
negotiations. President Clinton would accept Oakley's plea
on behalf of the Somali leaders. Several months later Omar
Salad, Mohamed Hassan Awale, and every man captured
by Task Force Ranger was released.

The reinforced task force was waiting for Durant when
the Red Cross convoy arrived at the airport. They had
turned out, a force now of more than a thousand, dressed in
khaki fatigues and floppy desert hats, glad to at last have

something to celebrate. They formed a corridor leading
from the base driveway to the platform of the transport
plane that would carry Durant to Germany, where Lorrie
had flown and was waiting for him. The men all had paper
cups with a swallow of bourbon, ostensibly from the fifth
of Jack Daniels the pilot had stashed in his rucksack and
warned his buddies, in his note from captivity, to keep their
hands off.

It was a day of joy and enormous relief, but also a day
of sadness. Durant had just learned that he would be the
only man from the crew of Super Six Four and its two
brave Delta defenders to come back alive. He smiled and
fought back tears as he was carried through the corridor on
a litter, an IV in his arm, clutching his unit's red beret.

The men around him cheered and then, as the stretcher
approached the ramp to the plane, they began to sing. The
song started in one or two places at first, boldly, then
spread to every voice.

They sang 'God Bless America.'

EPILOGUE

The Battle of the Black Sea, or as the Somalis call it,
Ma-alinti Rangers (The Day of the Rangers), is one that
America has preferred to forget. The images it produced of
dead soldiers dragged by jeering mobs through the streets
of Mogadishu are among the most horrible and disturbing
in our history, made all the worse by the good intentions
that prompted our intervention. There were no American
reporters in Mogadishu on October 34, 1993, and after a
week or so of frenzied attention, world events quickly
summoned journalists elsewhere. President Clinton's
decision just days after the fight to end Task Force Ranger's
mission to Somalia accomplished what he intended; it
slammed the door on the episode. In Washington a whiff of
failure is enough to induce widespread amnesia. There was
a Senate investigation and two days of congressional
hearings that produced a partisan report blaming the
president and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, who
resigned two months later, but that was it.

Even inside the military, where one might expect to
find strong professional interest in the biggest firefight
involving American soldiers since Vietnam, there appears
to have been little in the way of a detailed postmortem.
Proper respects were paid to the dead, and the heroism of
many soldiers formally honored, but beyond that, if the
battle's decorated veterans are to be believed, the battle is a
lost chapter.

When I began working on this project in 1996, my goal
was simply to write a dramatic account of the battle. I had
been struck by the intensity of the fight, and by the notion
of ninety-nine American soldiers surrounded and trapped in
an ancient African city fighting for their lives. My
contribution would be to capture in words the experience of
combat through the eyes and emotions of the soldiers
involved, blending their urgent, human perspective with a
military and political overview of their predicament. With
the exception of great fiction and several extremely well

written memoirs, the non-fiction accounts of modern war
I'd read were primarily written by historians. I wanted to
combine the authority of a historical narrative with the
emotion of the memoir, and write a story that read like
fiction but was true. Since I was starting my work three
years after the battle, I expected the historical portion of the
work had already been done. Surely somewhere in the
Pentagon or White House there was a thick volume of
after-action reports and exhibits detailing the fight and
critiquing our military performance. The challenge, I
thought, would be fighting to get as much of it as possible
declassified. I was wrong.

No such thick volume exists. While the Battle of the
Black Sea may well be the most thoroughly documented
incident in American military history, to my surprise no
one had even begun to collect all that raw information into
a definitive account. So instead of just writing a more vivid
version of the story, I found myself in the lucky and
exciting position of breaking new ground.

In the months since portions of this book premiered as a
newspaper series in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I have
spoken to hundreds of active U.S. military officers whom I
met at conferences or seminars, or who contacted me
seeking copies of the newspaper series or more detailed
information about certain aspects of the fight. Among that
number have been teachers at the military academies and
the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the
National Defense Analysis Institute, the Military
Operations Research Society, officers at the U.S. Marine
Corps' training base at Parris Island, the Security Studies
Program at MIT, and even the U.S. Central Command,
where the commander. General Anthony Zinni, invited me
to take part in a seminar before his staff at MacDill Air
Force Base in Tampa, Florida. I was flattered in every
instance, but uneasy with the idea that our armed forces
would rely on a journalist with no military background to
inform them about a battle fought by many men who are
still on active duty. As one of the former Delta team leaders
remarked after hearing of yet another invitation I'd

received, 'Why aren't they talking to us?'

One reason why the battle had not been seriously
studied is that the units involved, primarily Delta Force and
the Rangers, operate in secrecy, and so much official
information about the battle remains classified. It seems the
military is best at keeping secrets from itself. But the
bigger reason, I suspect, is the same one that sent
politicians diving for cover. The Battle of the Black Sea
was perceived outside the special operations community as
a failure.

It was not, at least in strictly military terms. Task Force
Ranger dropped into a teeming market in the heart of
Mogadishu in the middle of a busy Sunday afternoon to
surprise and arrest two lieutenants of warlord Mohamed
Farrah Aidid. It was a complex, difficult, and dangerous
assignment, and despite terrible setbacks and losses, and
against overwhelming odds, the mission was accomplished.

It was, of course, a Pyrrhic victory. The mission was
supposed to take about an hour. Instead, a large portion of
the assault force was stranded through a long night in a
hostile city, surrounded and fighting for their lives. Two of
their high-tech MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters went down
in the city, and two more crash-landed back at the base.
When the force was extricated the following morning by a
huge multinational rescue convoy, eighteen Americans
were dead and dozens more were badly injured. One, Black
Hawk pilot Michael Durant, had been carried off by an
angry Somali mob and would be held captive for eleven
days. News of the casualties and images of gleeful Somalis
abusing American corpses prompted revulsion and outrage
at home, embarrassment at the White House, and such
vehement objections in Congress that the mission against
Aidid was immediately called off. Major General William
F. Garrison's men may have won the battle, but, as he'd
predicted, they lost the war.

The victory was even more hollow for Somalia,
although it's not clear even five years later how nany
people there understand that. The fight itself was a terrible
mismatch. The Somali death toll was catastrophic.

Conservative counts numbered five hundred dead among
more than a thousand casualties. Aidid could and did claim
that his clan had driven off the world's mightiest military
machine. The Habr Gidr had successfully resisted UN
efforts to force him to share power. The clan now
celebrates October 3 as a national holiday - if such a thing
is possible where there is no nation. The pull-out of
American forces, months after the battle, aborted the UN’s
effort to establish a stable coalition government there.
Aidid died in 1996 without uniting Somalia under his rule,
a victim of the factional fighting the UN had tried to
resolve. His clan still struggles with rivals in Mogadishu,
trapped in the same bloody, anarchic standoff. Clan leaders
I spoke with in that destroyed city in the summer of 1997
seemed to think that the world was still watching their
progress anxiously. Photographer Peter Tobia and I were
the only guests at the Hotel Sahafi during most of our stay
there. We were the first and only Americans who have
returned to Mogadishu trying to piece together exactly
what happened. I told the Habr Gidr leaders who were
hostile to our project that this would likely be their only
chance to tell their side of the story, because there weren’t
journalists and scholars lined up at the border. The larger
world has forgotten Somalia. The great ship of
international goodwill has sailed. The bloody twists and
turns of Somali clan politics no longer concern us. Without
natural resources, strategic advantage, or even potentially
lucrative markets for world goods, Somalia is unlikely soon
to recapture the opportunity for peace and rebuilding
afforded by UNOSOM. Rightly or wrongly, they stand as
an enduring symbol of Third World ingratitude and
intractability, of the futility of trying to resolve local
animosity with international muscle. They've effectively
written themselves off the map. Nobody won the Battle of
the Black Sea, but like all important battles, it changed the
world. The awful price of the arrests of two obscure clan
functionaries named Omar Salad and Mohamed Hassan
Awale rightly shocked President Clinton, who reportedly
felt betrayed by his military advis ers and staff, much as an

equally inexperienced President Kennedy had felt in 1961
after the Bay of Pigs. It led to the resignation of Defense
Secretary Les Aspin and destroyed the promising career of
General Garrison, who commanded Task Force Ranger. It
aborted a hopeful and unprecedented UN effort to salvage a
nation so lost in anarchy and civil war that millions of its
people were starving. It ended a brief heady period of post-
Cold War innocence, a time when America and its allies
felt they could sweep venal dictators and vicious tribal
violence from the planet as easily and relatively bloodlessly
as Saddam Hussein had been swept from Kuwait.
Mogadishu has had a profound cautionary influence on
U.S. military policy ever since.

'It was a watershed,' says one State Department official,
who asked not to be named because his insight runs so
counter to our current foreign policy agenda. 'The idea used
to be that terrible countries were terrible because good,
decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil,
thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a
country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred
and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her
if she wants peace, and she'll say, yes, of course, I pray for
it daily. All the things you'd expect her to say. Then ask her
if she would be willing for her clan to share power with
another in order to have that peace, and she'll say, "With
those murderers and thieves? I'd die first." People in these
countries - Bosnia is a more recent example - don't want
peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women,
old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us
that people in these places bear much of the responsibility
for things being the way they are. The hatred and the
killing continues because they want it to. Or because they
don't want peace enough to stop it.'

So, for better or worse, the USS Harlan County was
turned away from the dock at Port-au-Prince one week
after the Mogadishu fight by an orchestrated 'riot' of fewer
than two hundred Haitians. The U.S. government (and the
UN) looked on as genocidal spasms killed a million people
in Rwanda and Zaire, and as atrocity was piled on atrocity

in Bosnia. There was some cynical posturing in the White
House and Congress after the Battle of the Black Sea about
never again placing U.S. troops under UN command, when
everyone involved understood perfectly well that Task
Force Ranger and even the QRF were under direct U.S.
command at all times. Even the decision to target Aidid
and his clansmen was driven by the U.S. State Department.
The single most forceful advocate for Task Force Ranger's
mission in Mogadishu was U.S. Admiral Jonathan Howe, a
former deputy on the National Security Council during the
Bush administration, who was the top UN official on site in
Mogadishu. Task Force Ranger was wholly an American
production.

Congress moved quickly to apportion blame. Hadn't
Aspin turned down an initial Task Force Ranger request for
the AC-130 gunship, and again, just weeks before the
fateful raid, rejected a request for Abrams tanks and
Bradley armored vehicles from General Thomas
Montgomery, QRF commander? It seems fairly obvious
that a light infantry force trapped in a hostile city would be
better off with armored vehicles to pull them out, and few
aerial firing platforms are as deadly effective as the AC-
130 Spectre. Many of the men who fought in Mogadishu
believe that at least some, if not all, of their friends would
have survived the mission if the Clinton administration had
been more concerned about force protection than
maintaining the correct political posture. Aspin himself,
before he stepped down, acknowledged that his decision on
the force request had been an error. The 1994 Senate
Armed Services Committee investigation of the battle
reached the same conclusions. The initial postmortem on
the battle was summed up in a powerful statement to the
committee by Lieutenant Colonel Larry Joyce, U.S. Army
retired, the father of Sergeant Casey Joyce, one of the
Rangers killed.

'Why were they denied armor, these forces? Had there
been armor, had there been Bradleys there, I contend that
my son would probably be alive today, because he, like the
other casualties that were sustained in the early phases of

the battle, were killed en route from the target to the
downed helicopter site, the first crash site. I believe there
was an inadequate force structure from the very beginning.'

This is the line picked up by David Hackworth, the
retired U.S. Army colonel who has made a second career
writing £>out the military. Hackworth devotes a chapter of
his 1996 book. Hazardous Duty, to the battle. Pausing to
vent his disappointment with not having been invited to
observe the action with the Rangers, he calls Garrison
'inept' and accuses the White House and military brass of
'striking heroic poses,' by not putting 'their weapons
systems where their mouths were.' Hackworth calculated
that tanks would have spared six killed and thirty wounded.
There are telling inaccuracies in Hackworth's account, and
it lacks even the pretense of fairness, but the colonel's
critique has nevertheless shaped understanding of the fight
both in and out of the military. Garrison is the butt of his
assault. He incorrectly suggests that the general was
directing the battle from a helicopter overhead, and even
quotes one of the platoon sergeants on the ground wishing
that he'd had a 'Stinger,' to shoot the general down (anyone
who fought in Mogadishu that day would have known
Garrison was not in the command helicopter). Hackworth
concludes that Garrison should have refused to conduct the
operation when the initial force package was trimmed. He
quotes Joyce as follows: 'Initially, I gave Garrison the
benefit of the doubt, but the more Rangers I've talked to,
the clearer it became that he had no good reason to launch
the raid the way he did. The tactics were completely
flawed. Garrison was a cowboy going for his third star at
the expense of his guys.'

From a man who lost his son in the fight, this is a
terrible accusation.

I lack the standing to critique the military decisions
made by Garrison and his men that day, but the work I
have done on Black Hawk Down does qualify me to report
authoritatively on the memories, feelings, and opinions of
the men who fought. I have interviewed more Rangers,
Delta soldiers, and helicopter pilots who were involved in

the battle than anyone, and I have yet to meet one who
expressed the opinions of the mission or of Garrison
reported by Hackworth. The men who undertook the raid
on October 3 were confident of their tactics and training
and committed to their goals. While many offered incisive
criticism of decisions large and small made before and
during the fight, and differed substantially with their
commanders on some points, they remain proud of
successfully completing their mission. I was struck by how
little bitterness there is among the men who underwent this
ordeal. What anger exists relates more to the decision to
call off the mission the day after the battle than anything
that happened during it. The record shows that in the weeks
prior to this raid, Garrison took more heat for being too
careful about launching missions than doing so recklessly.
The general, who retired in 1996 after a stint heading the
JFK School of Special Warfare at Fort Bragg, is held in
universally high regard by the men who served under him.

Garrison took full responsibility for the outcome of the
battle in a handwritten letter to President Clinton the day
after the fight. This letter has been called a ploy by the
general's critics, although one strains to see what advantage
he gained by writing it. It is a document that speaks plainly
for itself, the honorable act of an honorable man - and one
who clearly feels no shame for the way he or his men
conducted themselves in the fight:

/. The authority, responsibility and

accountability for the Op rests here in MOG with
the TF Ranger commander, notin Washington.

II. Excellent intelligence was available on the
target.

III. Forces were experienced in area as a result of
six previous operations.

IV. Enemy situation was well known: Proximity to
Bakara Market (SNA strongpoint); previous
reaction times of bad guys.

V. Planning for the Op was bottom up not top
down. Assaulters were confident it was a doable

operation. Approval of plan was retained by TF
Ranger commander.

VI. Techniques, tactics and procedures were
appropriate for mission/target.

VII. Reaction forces were planned for

contingencies: A.) CSAR on immediate standby
(UH60 with medics and security).

VIII. Loss of 1st Helo was supportable. Pilot pinned
in

wreckage presented problem.

IX. 2nd Helo crash required response from the

10th Mtn. QRF. The area of the crash was such that

SNA were there nearly immediately so we were
unsuccessful in reaching the crash site in time.

X. X. Rangers on 1st crash site were not pinned
down. They could have fought their way out. Our
creed would not allow us to leave the body of the
pilot pinned in the wreckage.

XI. XI Armor reaction force would have helped
but casualty figures may or may not have been
different. The type of men in the taskforce simply
would not be denied in their mission of getting to
their fallen comrades.

XII. The mission was a success. Targeted
individuals were captured and extracted from the
target.

XIII. For this particular target, President Clinton
and Sec. Aspin need to be taken off the blame line.

William F. Garrison

MG

Commanding

While the facts support Garrison's accounting overall, I
believe he is wrong in this letter on several counts. Only
part of points IV and VII are supported by the evidence.
Aidid's tactics were well-known, and the task force's
planning was effective, but only to a point. The Black
Hawk helicopter proved more vulnerable to RPG fire than

anticipated. Once two of them crashed (three others were
crippled but made it back to friendly ground), the task
force's 'techniques, tactics and procedures' were stretched
beyond their limits. There was clearly insufficient reaction
force standing by to rescue the pilots and crew of Super Six
Two, Michael Durant's helicopter. The CSAR bird was the
primary contingency for a helicopter crash. It was a well-
stocked, superbly trained chopper full of expert rescuers
and ground fighters. They were deployed minutes after the
crash of Cliff Wolcott's Super Six One, and were
instrumental in rescuing a portion of the crew and
recovering the bodies of Wolcott and copilot Donovan
Briley. But when Durant's Black Hawk crashed twenty
minutes later, there was no such rescue force at hand.
Durant and his crew had to await (tragically, as it turned
out) the arrival of a ground rescue force.

Prior to launching the mission. Garrison had alerted the
10th Mountain Division, the QRF, but had decided to let
them stay at the UN compound north of the city instead of
moving them down to the task force's airport base. They
were "promptly summoned after Wolcott's Black Hawk
crashed, but moved to the Ranger base by such a
roundabout route (avoiding crossing through the city) that
they didn't arrive until fifty minutes after the first helicopter
crash (almost a half hour after Durant's helicopter went
down). So for the first thirty minutes Durant and his crew
were on the ground, the only rescue force Garrison could
muster was a hastily assembled convoy comprised mostly
of support personnel, well-trained soldiers all, but men
whom no one anticipated throwing into the fight.
Ultimately neither this convoy nor the QRF could fight
their way in. They were barred by blockades and ambushes
that Aidid's militias had plenty of time to prepare. The task
force knew that it would encounter trouble if it took longer
than thirty minutes to get in and out of the target, but few
anticipated how many RPGs Aidid's fighters would bring
to the fight. The price was paid in downed Black Hawks.
Garrison’s point X is also debatable. The men I interviewed
who spent the night around the first crashed Black Hawk

say they were pinned down. In strictly military terms, being
pinned down means a force can do nothing. Arguably, if
Task Force Ranger's commanders had wanted to move the
force out of the city they could have. More intensive air
support was available in the form of Cobra attack
helicopters attached to the QRF. But no such decision was
made, and from the perspective of the men on the ground,
they were pinned down. This is the opinion of everyone I
interviewed, from the ranking officers to the lowliest
privates. While it may have been possible to fight their way
back to the base on foot, the men believe they would have
sustained terrible losses. The men on the lost convoy took
better than 50 percent casualties moving through the streets
in vehicles. The force at crash site one would have had to
carry their dead and wounded. The men holed up with
Captain Steele at the southern end of the perimeter on
Marehan Road balked at having to move one block on foot
at the height of the battle. There is no doubt Garrison's
men, if so ordered, would have tried to fight their way out,
but they stayed put for reasons that went beyond loyalty to
the pinned body of Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott.
Arguing otherwise puts a noble cast to the predicament, but
falls short of the facts.

The rest of Garrison's statement squares well with the
facts. The president and Secretary of Defense of course
bear ultimate responsibility for any actions of the U.S.
military, but without the advantage of hindsight, their
decisions regarding the deployment of Task Force Ranger
are defensible. Trimming the AC-130 gunship from the
initial force request, in light of growing congressional
pressure to bring the troops home from Somalia, seems
particularly so. Garrison himself felt the gunship was not
only unnecessary, but likely to be a less effective firing
platform over a densely populated urban neighborhood
than the AH-6 Little Birds. If both the Little Birds and the
gun-ship had been in the air, one or the other would have
been severely restricted. The small helicopters, flying
below the gunship, would have had to clear out to avoid
crossing the gunship's fire. As it was, the Little Birds

provided extremely effective air support throughout the
battle. To a man, the soldiers pinned down around the first
crash site credit brave and skillful Little Birds' pilots with
keeping the Somali crowds at bay. The Somali fighters we
interviewed in Mogadishu agreed. They believe the
helicopters were the only thing that prevented a total rout
of the pinned-down force. Soldiers trapped around the
wrecked chopper understandably found themselves longing
for the devastating firepower of the AC- 130, which could
have carved out a corridor of fire for their escape. But
command concerns about limiting collateral damage were
legitimate. The corridor of fire envisioned by the men on
the ground would have pulverized a wide swath of
Mogadishu, likely killing many more non-combatants than
Aidid's fighters. Support for the gunship was lukewarm on
up the ranks, all the way to General Colin Powell, who in
his final weeks as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
acquiesced without complaint to the decision. Interviewed
for this book, Powell said that while he formally endorsed
the entire force request, even in retrospect he could not
fault Aspin's decision to trim the gunship.

Garrison's task force never requested or envisioned
armor as part of its force package. Its tactics were to strike
with surprise and speed, and up until October 3, those
tactics worked. It is lir for military experts to criticize
Garrison's judgment in this, but hardly fair to accuse Aspin
of turning down a request the task force never made.
General Montgomery asked for Abrams tanks and Bradley
vehicles in late September for his QRFs, and these were
turned down, again because of pressure in Washington to
lower, not raise, the American military presence in
Mogadishu. It is easy to dismiss these pressures as effete
concerns, but strong congressional support is vital to
sustain any military venture . In our system of government,
everything requires a balancing act. At that point, any
move that appeared to be deepening America's
commitment to the military option in Mogadishu weakened
support for it. Even if Montgomery had gotten his
Bradleys, it's questionable what impact they would have

had in the battle. It is doubtful they would have been in
place by October 3. Since they would have been assigned
to the 10th Mountain Division, they would not have been
part of the Ranger ground reaction force. Lieutenant
Colonel Joyce has argued that Bradleys might have saved
his son's life, but since the armor would have been assigned
to a unit across the city that was not thrown into the fight
until after Sergeant Joyce was killed, it's hard to see how.
The rescue force that finally did extricate the men pinned
down at crash site one came in with armor, Pakistani tanks
and Malaysian APCs. It may have arrived faster if the QRF
had been equipped with the superior Bradleys, but the one
soldier who died awaiting rescue. Corporal Jamie Smith,
bled to death early in the evening. The rescue column
would have had to have left four or five hours before it did
to save his life, assuming surgeons could have saved him -
by no means a definite thing. Again, the quarrel is over
Garrison’s call, not with weak-kneed Washington
politicians undercutting forces in the field. Maybe
Garrison, General Wayne Downing, General Joseph Hoar,
General Powell, and the rest of the military command
should have insisted on armor and the AC-130 from the
start. They didn't. I believe these are issues over which
well-meaning military experts differ. But it was, as the
general noted in his letter, his call.

The suggestion that Garrison and his men should have
refused to fight without getting their full force request puts
me in mind of General George McClellan, whose battle -
shy Union army stayed safely encamped for years
demanding more and more resources. President Lincoln
finally fired him for suffering a terminal case of 'the slows.'
The men of Task Force Ranger were daring, ambitious
soldiers. They were more inclined to think in terms of
working with what they had than refusing to work until
they got everything they wanted.

As battles go, Mogadishu was a minor engagement.
General Powell has pointed out that the deaths of eighteen
American soldiers in Vietnam would not have even
warranted a press conference. Old soldiers may snort over

the fuss generated by this gunfight, but it speaks well of
America that our threshold for death and injury to our
soldiers has been so significantly lowered. This does not
mean that military action is never worth the danger, or the
price. Our armed forces will be called upon again to
intervene in obscure parts of the world - as they already
have in Bosnia. To prepare for these twenty-first-century
missions, there are probably few more important case
studies than this one.

The mistakes made in Mog weren't because people in
charge didn't care enough, or weren't smart enough. It's too
easy to dismiss errors by blaming the commanders. It
assumes there exists a cadre of brilliant officers who know
all the answers before the questions are even asked. How
many airborne rescue teams should there have been? One
for every Black Hawk and Little Bird in the sky? Some of
the failures deserve further study. During the battle, efforts
to steer the lost convoy from the air turned into a black
comedy. At risk of a cliche, how is it that a nation that
could land an unmanned little go-cart on the surface of
Mars couldn't steer a convoy five blocks through the streets
of Mogadishu? Why did it take the QRF fifty minutes to
arrive at the task force's base when things started to go
bad? Shouldn't they have been better positioned at the
outset? But these are all questions that are only obvious in
retrospect. The truth is, Task Force Ranger came within
several minutes of pulling off its mission on October 3
without a hitch. If Black Hawk Super Six One had not been
hit, the 'bad' choices made by Garrison would have been
called bold. We will never know if Admiral Jonathan Howe
was right to believe a lasting peace might have been
achieved in Somalia if Aidid had been captured or his clan
dismantled as a military force. It seems unlikely. In the
years since the warlord's death, little in Mogadishu has
changed. The Habr Gidr is a large and powerful clan
planted deep in Somalia's past and present political culture.
To think that 450 superb American soldiers could uproot it
violently, thereby clearing the way for, as General Powell
puts it, 'an outbreak of Jeffersonian democracy,' seems far-

fetched. In the end, the Battle of the Black Sea is another
lesson in the limits of what force can accomplish.

I began working on this story about two-and-a-half
years after the battle was fought. I had been intrigued by
the early accounts of the fight, both as a citizen and as a
writer. It was clearly an important and fascinating episode,
one with tragic consequences for many and lasting
implications for American foreign policy. Given the fierce
but limited nature of the gunfight - a small force of
Americans pinned down overnight in an African city - I
realized that it might be possible to tell the whole story. But
the undertaking intimidated me. I had no military
background or sources, and assumed that someone with
both would tell the story far better than I could.

Nevertheless I remained curious enough to read
whatever stories I saw about the incident. I was especially
intrigued by President Clinton's subsequent struggles to
deal with it. Particularly poignant were newspaper accounts
I read of Clinton's meetings with the parents of the men
killed in the battle. Larry Joyce and Jim Smith, the father of
Corporal Jamie Smith, had reportedly questioned the
president sharply in one of those meetings. I wondered
about the informal visit the president paid to soldiers
wounded in Mogadishu as they recuperated at Walter Reed
Army Hospital. How did those men feel about meeting
with the man who had sent them on the mission, and then
abruptly called it off? At the Medal of Honor ceremony for
the two Delta soldiers, I read that the father of posthumous
honoree Sergeant Randy Shughart insulted the president,
telling him he was not fit to be commander in chief.

When I was asked by The Philadelphia Inquirer to
profile President Clinton in its magazine as he ran for
reelection, I tried to answer some of these questions.
Interviewing some of the families for an account of their
session at the White House, I drove up to Long Valley,
New Jersey, one spring afternoon to meet with Jim Smith, a
retired U.S. Army captain and former Ranger who had lost
a leg in Vietnam. Jim and I sat in his den for several hours.
He described the meeting with Clinton, and then talked at

length about his son Jamie, how it had felt to lose him, and
what little he knew about the battle and how his son had
died. I left his house that day determined to find out more.

My initial requests to the Pentagon media office were
naive and went nowhere. I filed Freedom of Information
requests for documents that, two years later, I have not
received. I was told the men I wanted to interview were in
units off-limits to the press. My only hope of finding the
foot soldiers I wanted was to ask for them by name, and I
knew only a handful of names. I combed through what
little had been written about the battle, and submitted the
names I found there, but I did not receive a response. Then
Jim Smith sent me an invitation. The army was dedicating
a building at the Pixatinny Arsenal near his home in
memory of Jamie. I debated whether to drive up. It would
take the whole day and, with my lack of success, the story
had receded in priority. Still, I had been moved by my
conversation with Jim. I have sons just a few years younger
than his Jamie. I couldn't imagine losing one of them, much
less in a gunfight someplace like Mogadishu. I made the
drive.

And there, at this dedication ceremony, were about a
dozen Rangers who had fought with Jamie in Mogadishu.
Jim’s introduction helped break down the normal suspicion
soldiers have for reporters. The men gave me their names
and told me how to arrange interviews with them. Over
three days at Fort Benning that fall I conducted my first
twelve interviews. Each of the men I talked to had names
and phone numbers for others who had fought there that
day, many of them no longer in the army. My network
grew from there. Nearly everyone I contacted was eager to
talk. In the summer of 1997, the Inquirer sent Peter Tobia
and me to Mogadishu. We flew to Nairobi, paid our weight
in khat, climbed in the back of a small plane with sacks of
the drug, and flew to a dirt airstrip outside Mogadishu.
Accompanied by Ibrahim Roble Farah, a Nairobi
businessman and member of the clan, we spent just seven
days in the city, long enough to walk the streets where the
battle had taken place and to interview some of the men

who had fought against American soldiers that day. We
learned how Somalis had perceived the sometimes brutal
tactics in the summer of 1993, as UN troops led a clumsy
manhunt for Aidid, and how widespread appreciation for
the humanitarian intervention had turned to hatred. Peter
and I left with a feel for the place, for the futility of its local
politics, and some insight into why Somalis fought so
bitterly against American soldiers that day.

In the months after I returned, I found military officers
who were eager to hear what I could tell them about the
Somali perspective, and about the battle. My work from the
ground up eventually led me to a treasure of official
information. The fifteen-hour battle had been videotaped
from a variety of platforms, so the action I had
painstakingly pieced together in my mind through
interviews could be checked against images of the actual
fight. The hours of radio traffic during the battle had been
recorded and transcribed. This would provide actual
dialogue from the midst of the action and was invaluable in
helping to sort out the precise sequence of events. It also
conveyed, with frightening immediacy, the horror of it, the
feel of men struggling to stave off panic and stay alive.
Other documents fleshed out the intelligence background
of the assault, exactly what Task Force Ranger knew and
was trying to accomplish. None of the men on the ground,
caught up completely in their own small comer of the fight,
had a complete vision of the battle. But their memories,
combined with this documentary material, including a
precise chronology and the written accounts of Delta
operators and SEALs, made it possible for me to
reconstruct the whole picture. This material gave me, I
believe, the best chance any writer has ever had to tell the
story of a battle completely, accurately, and well.

Every battle is a drama played out apart from broader
issues. Soldiers cannot concern themselves with the forces
that bring them to a fight, or its aftermath. They trust their
leaders not to risk their lives for too little. Once the battle is
joined, they fight to survive as much as to win, to kill
before they are killed. The story of combat is timeless. It is

about the same things whether in Troy or Gettysburg,
Normandy or the h Drang. It is about soldiers, most of
them young, trapped in a fight to the death. The extreme
and terrible nature of war touches something essential
about being human, and soldiers do not always like what
they learn. For those who survive, the victors and the
defeated, the battle lives on in their memories and
nightmares and in the dull ache of old wounds. It survives
as hundreds of searing private memories, memories of loss
and triumph, shame and pride, struggles each veteran must
re -fight every day of his life.

No matter how critically history records the policy
decisions that led up to this fight, nothing can diminish the
professionalism and dedication of the Rangers and Special
Forces units who fought there that day. The Special Forces
units showed in Mogadishu why it is important for the
military to keep and train highly motivated, talented, and
experienced soldiers. When things went to hell in the
streets, it was in large part the men of Delta and the SEALs
who held things together and got most of the force out
alive.

Many of the young Americans who fought in the Battle
of Mogadishu are civilians again. They are beginning
families and careers, no different outwardly than the
millions of other twenty-something members of their
generation. They are creatures of pop culture who grew up
singing along with Sesame Street, shuttling to day care, and
navigating today's hyper-adolescence through the pitfalls of
drugs and unsafe sex. Their experience of battle, unlike that
of any other generation of American soldiers, was colored
by a lifetime of watching the vivid gore of Hollywood
action movies. In my interviews with those who were in the
thick of the battle, they remarked again and again how
much they felt like they were in a movie, and had to remind
themselves that this horror, the blood, the deaths, was real.
They describe feeling weirdly out of place, as though they
did not belong here, fighting feelings of disbelief, anger,
and ill-defined betrayal. This cannot be real. Many wear
black metal bracelets inscribed with the names of their

friends who died, as if to remind themselves daily that it
was real. To look at them today, few show any outward
sign that one day not too long ago they risked their lives in
an ancient African city, killed for their country, took a
bullet, or saw their best friend shot dead. They returned to a
country that didn't care or remember. Their fight was
neither triumph nor defeat; it just didn't matter. It's as
though their firefight was a bizarre two -day adventure, like
some extreme Outward Bound experience where things got
out of hand and some of the guys got killed. I wrote this
book for them.

SOURCES

So many of the men who fought in this battle agreed to
tell me their stories that most of the incidents related in this
book were described to me by several different soldiers.
Where there were discrepancies, one man's memory
generally worked to improve the others'. In some cases,
comparing stories was a useful check on embellishment. I
found most of the men I interviewed to be extraordinarily
candid. Having had this experience, they seemed to feel
entrusted with it. Most were forthright to the point of
revealing things about themselves they found deeply
troubling or embarrassing. Once or twice, having been
unable to corroborate a story, when I pressed the soldier
who originally related it to me, he backed down and
apologized for having repeated something he himself did
not witness. I have stayed away from anecdotes told
secondhand. With very few exceptions, the dialogue in the
book is either from the radio tapes or from one or more of
the men actually speaking. My goal throughout has been to
re-create the experience of combat through the eyes of
those involved; to attempt that without reporting dialogue
would be impossible. Of course, no one's recollection of
what they said is ever perfect. My standard is the best
memory of those involved. Where there were discrepancies
in dialogue they were usually minor, and I was able to
work out the differences by going back and forth between
the men involved. In several cases I have reported dialogue
or statements heard by others present, even though I was
unable to locate the actual speakers. In these cases the
words spoken were heard by more than one witness, or
recorded in written accounts within days after the battle.

For understandable reasons, very few of the Delta
operators who played such an important role in this battle
agreed to talk to me about it. Their policy and tradition is
silent professionalism. Master Sergeant Paul Howe, who
has left the unit, obtained official permission, but risked the
opprobrium of his former colleagues for speaking so

candidly with me. Several current members of the unit also
found ways to communicate with me. I am grateful to
them. I also obtained the written accounts of several key
members of the Delta assault force. It enabled me to
provide a rare picture of these consummate soldiers in
action, from their own perspective. All told, this input
represents a small fraction of the unit, so the Delta portion
of this story is weighted more heavily from Howe's and the
others' perspectives than I would have liked.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my friends Max King and Bob
Rosenthal at The Philadelphia Inquirer for their
exceptional vision and support. Black Hawk Down began
as a newspaper project and is the kind of story no other
newspaper in America would have undertaken. Max and
Rosey saw the potential for it early on, and enlarged my
own ambitions for it. By helping to craft my first draft of
this story into an episodic newspaper series, David
Zucchino was its first editor and substantially contributed
to this book’s final shape. I owe a great deal to
photographer Peter Tobia, who made the very difficult trip
to Mogadishu with me in the summer of 1997, and returned
with a stunning collection of work documenting that
blasted city,

I have made several friends for life reporting this story.
Since I had no military experience of my own, the last two
years have been a crash course in martial terminology,
tactics, and ethics. I have learned a great deal from
Lieutenant Colonel L. H. 'Bucky' Burruss, U.S. Army (ret.),
a great soldier and fine writer, who was kind enough to
seek me out and act as a first reader and expert adviser.
Master Sergeant Paul Howe and Dan Schilling, a former air
force combat controller, were also early readers and made
thoughtful and helpful suggestions. I would not have been
able to get started on this story without the help of Jim
Smith, a former Ranger captain whose son, Jamie, was
killed in Mogadishu. Jim kindly introduced me to some of
his son's fellow Rangers. Walt Sokalski and Andy Lucas of
the U.S. Special Operations Command public relations
office set up the initial interviews with Rangers and 160th
SOAR helicopter pilots that launched this project. Thanks
to Jack Atwater of the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum for
his quick course in Weaponry 101. These are just a few of
the hundreds of military people who have generously
shared their time and expertise, some of whom have asked
me not to name them. I am grateful to Ibrahim Robles

Farah for his help in getting Peter and me in and out of
Somalia.

Thanks again to my very patient wife, Gail, and our
family, Aaron, Anya, B .J., Danny, and Ben, who permit me
to live and work in a way that often complicates their own
lives. My agent, Rhoda Weyr, has proved her unerring
judgment once more by steering me to Morgan Entrekin,
whom I feel very lucky to have as an editor, publisher, and
friend, and Assistant Editor Amy Hundley. Together with
the rest of the very smart and successful team at
Grove/Atlantic, they have created one of the finest care and
feeding systems for writers currently in existence.

Mohamed Shiek Ali, a veteran Aidid militiaman who fought
against the Rangers on October 3 and was wounded in the

right arm. Peter Tobia/T/ie Philadelphia Inquirer.

Delta snipers Gary Gordon (left) and Randy Shughart. Both
men were awarded Medals of Honor for their efforts to save
Durant and his crew. Paul Howe.

(left to right) Winn G. Mahuron poses with Tommie Field,
Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank, and Mike Durant, the crew of
Black Hawk Super Six Four. u.s. Army special operations Command.

Mike Durant as he
appeared on the videotape
shot by his Somali captors
the day after he was shot
down and taken captive.

Cable News Network.

Copyright © 1998 Cable News Network,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Enraged Somalis
drag the body of
Black Hawk crew
chief Bill

Cleveland through
the streets of
Mogadishu the
morning after the
battle.

Paul Watson/77?e TorontoStar.

Group shot of Task Force Ranger without Delta Force.
Humvees are in rear. David Diemer.

Black Hawk Super Six Four,
piloted by CWO Mike
Durant, moves in from the
ocean over Mogadishu.

Rangers Alan Barton, Ron
Galliette, and Rob Phipps
pose after returning from a
night mission, shawn Nelson.

Shawn Nelson.

Ranger Keni Thomas aboard
a Black Hawk heading out
on a mission. ieff Young.

(left to right) Ranger Joe Harosky, Air Force Combat
Controller Dan Schilling, and Ranger Mike Pringle posing
before their Humvee, which led the Lost Convoy

through the City. Dan Schilling.

A Black Hawk flares before landing on one of the many
practice missions in Mogadishu's dunes. Dale sizemore.

The only photograph taken
from the ground during the
battle on October 3. It was
snapped looking west from
Chalk One's position at the
southeast corner of the
target block. Target building
looms in the background to

the right. Jim Lechner.

Rangers pose in a
Humvee topped with a
Mark- 19. ClayOthic.

Rangers Brian Heard (left) and David Floyd pose in the
hangar prior to a mission. Dale sizemore.

Maj. Gen. William F.
Garrison, commander of
Task Force Ranger, as he
testified before the U.S.
Senate committee in 1994.

Ranger Clay Othic posing
behind the .50 caliber
machine gun in the turret of

a Humvee. Dan Schilling.

Associated Press.

President Clinton with
Ranger Scott Galentine at
Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Galentine had his severed
thumb sewn back onto his

hand. Shawn Nelson.

Ranger Lorenzo Ruiz, who
was killed after taking the
wounded Othic's place in the

Humvee turret. Dale Sizemore.